[Verse 1] The morning doesn’t rise for us. It jerks forward like a cough— thick with smog, clock hands clicking like teeth in the cold. We dress in canvas and routine. Threadbare ambition wrapped in barcodes and biometric timecards. This is a kind of hunger. Not the growl of a belly, but the quiet ache of being the rung on someone else’s ladder. [Verse 2] I’ve seen the bosses’ shadows lengthen across the breakroom floor. They don’t need to speak— the silence drips like oil down our spines. We are paid in obedience. The check clears, but the debt stays. Our lungs inhale deadlines. Our spines bend into blueprints. We stitch their empires with fingers too calloused to point blame. [Chorus] And still, we rise before the sun, not to chase it, but to carry it— on backs that sag like promises left in voicemail. We make heat but never feel the fire. We build the feast but starve in its scent. The fruit is real. The hands are ours. But the harvest never belongs to the hungry. [Verse 3] Every revolution sold as self-improvement. “Grind harder.” “Rise and shine.” The gospel of the spreadsheet wears a human smile, but it bites like steel. We line their pockets like ghosts line graves— unseen, unthanked, unburied. [Bridge] I once dreamed of being something more. Not rich. Just full. But the dream, like the job, requires overtime. And hope— hope has a dress code. [Final Chorus] We are the thunder they walk on to keep their feet dry. We are the poem they never read but quote for profit. We are the blood behind the gloss. The sweat beneath the stock price. We are not broken. We are breaking— daily, quietly, perfectly, in the shape of a man who was never meant to be whole.
