Loyalty Costs More

[Intro] (Breathe in) (Breathe out) [Verse 1] Asphalt stained with grease and sacrificial spill Iron lungs inhaling soot against my iron will The sirens scream like banshees in the ventilation shafts I'm carving out a kingdom from the wreckage and the grafts No handouts here just calloused palms and jagged glass Watching every predator that moves among the mass The lead is in the water and the mercury is rising Every local prophet is just busy compromising I count the rusted bolts upon the subway's underbelly My stomach feels the hunger turning acidic and jelly I'm walking through the gauntlet of the automated surveillance Calculated risks within this theater of failure [Verse 2] I talk to god in alleys where the dumpsters overflow He doesn't answer back but man the silence seems to grow My father's ghost is rattling the chain link on the fence Inherited the trauma as a primary defense I'm swallowing the capsules just to keep the demons quiet My pulse is like a piston in a predatory riot The system is a virus and the antidote is hidden Doing what I must and doing everything forbidden The radiator hisses like a serpent in the corner Acting as the victim and the solitary mourner I grind my teeth to powder while the ceiling starts to sag Tucking all my logic in a heavy canvas bag [Chorus] (Through the fire) Walking through the fire alone (All alone) Flesh and blood and bone Tear the marrow from the stone Walking through the fire alone [Verse 3] Disconnected from the pulse of every plastic mannequin Scraping off the residue of where the sin had been The isolation is a weapon sharpened on the grind Leaving every parasitic weakness far behind I'm bleeding out the poison of a thousand bitter years The rust is in my larynx and the salt is in my tears The architecture's crumbling like logic in a cage Writing my obituary on a yellowed page The sirens are a symphony of systematic dread Counting all the bodies while they're sleeping in my bed I'm mining for the meaning in the rubble of the state Accepting every portion of a self-inflicted fate [Verse 4] The fire doesn't cleanse it only blackens what is left A master of the struggle and a victim of the theft I stand beneath the scaffolding and wait for it to drop Knowing that the momentum is impossible to stop No medals for the martyr just a shallow hole in dirt Embracing every synapse that is screaming with the hurt The city is a furnace and I'm fueling up the flame Forgetting my identity and burning off my name I crawl across the asphalt on my hands and on my knees Begging for a moment of a momentary freeze But the heat is unrelenting and the sky is turning grey Looking for a sanctuary that was hauled away