H.S.R pt. 2

It had come to understand stillness as something to be made, joist by joist

Out of the material of the diminishing body that one’s required to hoist

And so it gave itself over to 72 hours of stillness perfectly rendered

That even the dust motes in the air seemed to be sweating

And floatin’ all frantic in motion like spastic panickeys flowin’

It drank nothing save what the pipe, weeping in its slow condensation

Deigned to offer her tongue with, like, miserly incrementations

It ate nothing at all, and it’s unfed stomach began consuming itself straight from in-

-Side with a hollowing that outpaced even the agony blooming at its wrists, what a tragedy

The restraints had worn its skin and now it’s ruined, legs denied all purpose, can’t use ‘em

As they swell beneath like some Monte Produce fruit which was left too long on the vine and no one knew it

Its skin lost its color, going gray of ash, of something halfway to the gravin’

Till it lay there corpse-still, breathin’ air that could’ve been mistaken for its own cessation

Yet achin’ for creation, one layer of deception-ception ‘cept it’s desecration

Cause beneath the outer body shutting down lay a body laboring

With ferocious discipline, metronomic issuing of micro-tremors, makes it seem

Like a mismanagement of her own heat mark, executed with such exactitude

That when the facility reached out on the 72nd day, just like it was built to do

To interrogate her tracking implant for the telltale flatline of inactive status

It instead found something it just couldn’t manage, aberrantly alive yet dead light flashin’

 

Keep thinkin’ bout the trains that stopped stopping

Keep thinkin’ bout the pains of not crossing

Leanin’ ‘gainst the window, falling in another state

I ain’t gettin’ off, this metro got no brakes

It just shows me all of em going by

Going by, going by, going by

Going by, going by, going by

Going by, going by, going by

 

Corrupted, the system decided, a malfunction was its conclusion

With its indifference to bureaucracy, they made the order and issued it

Retrieve unit for equipment inspection, we don’t know if it’s alive but we’re takin’ no chances guessin’

And they came for her at two in the morning, the retrieval team ain’t stressin’

Stayin’ ignorant of who they carried, only seein’ a body that’s halfway ruined, a goner

And assuming the paperwork of a routine transfer, pressing a diagnostic part to her collar

And a sedative patch to the thin skin of her throat, then lift her onto a gurney bound, they hoped

For an infirmary to beguile and carried her into the dark thinking they were closing a file

But by the time the van doors closed, she was already somewhere else herself, in the calculus

Of her mind, which had assessed each semester down to its last second, still bound, restrict-

-Ed physically, so she tears the patch open with her teeth, chemicals in her mouth, spit-

‘In’ em out, guards lunging for the controls like it’s the Rocky Mountains

She had spent months testing the restraints for their seams and general mistakes

Until she knew exactly where the metal would yield if struck with enough power for real

And so, on this last and only night that mattered, she drove forward with the whole weight of her stature

Rasping the lock against the wall of the van, looks like it wasn’t made for the brawl that’s at hand

It broke, tolling the end of the darkness, and she was free, though not yet capable of running

And she murmured the first words she’d spoken in like a monthy

“I’m getting out” the guards thought she was delirious, but they were wrong, now she’s out in the world

Instead of a figure registered in some logbook of the controlled, something else has unfurled

Which is proof that the most flawlessly developed hutch still relents, ultimately, to a psyche that declines to give up

 

Keep thinkin’ bout the trains that stopped stopping

Keep thinkin’ bout the pains of not crossing

Leanin’ ‘gainst the window, falling in another state

I ain’t gettin’ off, this metro got no brakes

It just shows me all of em going by

Going by, going by, going by

Going by, going by, going by

Going by, going by, going by

 

The 11:47 doesn't stop here anymore

Since they cut the route in '09 or '06, or

Some year with a wide hole gapin' like a whore

Tracks lie rusting like a spine that I just tore

Hydrofluoric acid dissolution, we don’t have to bury

I used to sit at that crossing and count the cars, during January

And February and March I’d reach like 72, rectangles sliding across

Still standing here, it’s just me and the weeds and this bottle, now I don’t see

Any gates or lights or bells, pour it full, but I’m culling and watching it leave its cell

There was a goat on my buddy's land that would climb the one rock in the whole flat just to stand

And be 6 inches higher than everything that he owned, now I’m thinkin’ about the goat

A little height ‘fore the dark comes back down over the field

You probably still think that light is the default setting we wield

It’s really just a match someone was holding all along till your fluids started boiling too long

And their arm gets tired, rewired, everybody’s arm gets tired

My father’s arm got tired and my mother’s arm got tired

And I can feel my own arm starting to shake in dire

If I end up getting off will it just be at a place two lines of iron happen to cross

Under the old rock, I raise a hand to the version of myself who can’t see me in this present spot

Who doesn’t yet know what I know, my only company, curled up under everything else, now it’s bubbling

Like a root that was under me till the thunder above the trees struck it clean in its fuckin’ seeds

And now it’s grown all through the foundation of the house, so if I pulled it out, it would all come down

Maybe I do want the house down, maybe I want it in the light where I can see the shape

Instead of sitting in the yard with some Jack Daniel’s, in the dark, holding on its weight

Every time I look for something nice to land on in the dead of night, and when it’s silent

I know exactly what I did in that house the summer everything went quiet

And why nobody talks about anymore, even in private

And exactly why I’m the last one left who remembers the violence

 

Keep thinkin’ bout the trains that stopped stopping

Keep thinkin’ bout the pains of not crossing

Leanin’ ‘gainst the window, falling in another state

I ain’t gettin’ off, this metro got no brakes

It just shows me all of em going by

Going by, going by, going by

Going by, going by, going by

Going by, going by, going by

 

Known in the ledgers as the Human Stress Reliever, one of many produced

In the headquarters somewhere off Interstate 32

Were they human or weren’t they, nobody could say the truth

I was also a manufacturer there, we start forgin’ em in their youth, yeah

 

Keep thinkin’ bout the trains that stopped stopping

Keep thinkin’ bout the pains of not crossing

Leanin’ ‘gainst the window, falling in another state

I ain’t gettin’ off, this metro got no brakes

It just shows me all of em going by

Going by, going by, going by

Going by, going by, going by

Going by, going by, going by