[Verse 1: Dessa]
I’m on a vision quest at the Best Western
The best-dressed wreck in the hotel lounge
Found out that the message in the bottle’s the booze
But I’ve got shit left to do so
So keep waiting
So just be patient
I’m not sure how or when or from whom
But I got this funny feeling I’m in for big news
Took a walk to cool off, come down and collect clues
Sky rests on the overpass
Cracks the foundation
Passersbys' faces
They don’t look like mine to me
Though I’ve been told that we’re related
That we’ve got the same fear of death
The same basic debts, the same
That we’re branded with a secret in a language we can’t read
On the courting spirals of a coupled double helix
Panic in a phone booth
Love in a parked car
Broken bottles like corpses of the fallen stars
And valets are the only ones
That in modern America
Remember how to run
[Hook: Dessa & P.O.S.]
Is there anyone there?
Epsilon (all day)
Sigma Sigma Alpha (all day)
Is there anyone there?
[Verse 2: Dessa]
Distress message coming from the city kids
I read it in the smoke signals from their filtered cigarettes
It’s all boredom and bitterness at the Ritalin pill
That does a legitimate business making kids keep still
[Verse 3: P.O.S.]
Yeah but still ain’t motionless
Test the restless hands for shakes
And see the flutter when the patience breaks
With the crickets in 4/4 and gangster lean
[Verse 4: Dessa]
Double dutch sounds a bit like dots and dashes
I sit for a minute tryna understand the pattern
But that’s not morse code man (nuh-uh)
Y’all just double-handed
[Verse 5: P.O.S]
Trouble landed, tricks'll roll, fuck it
Whatever gets your blood up
Rip that sidewalk sounding like a click track cut up
Wind speaks to wall makes the frame creek
Ghost in the house wakes the baby
[Bridge: Dessa & P.O.S.]
It goes
All day, all day, we keep it movin' all day
Come on
Is there anyone there?
All day, all day, we keep it movin' all day
Come on
Is there anyone there?
[Hook: Dessa & P.O.S.]
[Verse 6: P.O.S.]
Never better
Thick skin, thin sweater
Spinnin’ grins at a dirt whistle-wetter flirt
This’ll get her hurt
This’ll sever worth
Stop pop lock the fuck out
Duck ain’t got a buck
Like the luck’s out (dang)
Who makes a living giving plasma?
Nickle-thin kids spilling smoke up out the asthma
Anyway who paves the way
When you can save your slave
And make a dollar out your veins
He times it by the weeks
Patterns for the sheep
Sleepwalking to the beat
Keep talking to the loose leaf
Silence to the creeps
Violence from the beef
Teach tryna find a new leaf
Science of a time defined by climb up and recline
Speech, fine, whatever
Ain’t nothing but a rumble in that belly
But you're starving’s what you’ll tell her
Me?
Oh I’ll be on the corner eating nothing a la mode
Staring at the stoplights trying to break the code
Love in a phone booth
Panic in a parked car
Static in a signal
Scars a communique
All day
In every which with sitcom wit
Handle the sitch, hit the switch
It goes
[Outro: Dessa & P.O.S.]
All day, all day, we keep it movin' all day
Come on
Is there anyone there?
All day, and it's like all day, we keep it movin' all day
Is there anyone there?
All day, all day, we keep it movin' all day
Come on
Is there anyone there?
Is there anyone there?
She’s a hothead
4/4 is a music theory term.
Delta
Epsilon
Sigma
Sigma
Alpha
-D.E.S.S.A :D
Stoplights are everyday things we take as the word. Green means go, yellow slow, red; stop. It’s something we don’t question, they are what they are and so much so even the colors associated with them trigger certain modes of action/feelings. But here, (on the heels
Of the previous line) he’s standing on the corner (keeping up with the theme of double meanings; as on a corner you need to pick a direction) reveling in/enjoying (not actually eating ice cream ala mode – but using it as a figure of speech for two positives – what’s better on ice cream than more ice cream – also ice cream and ala mode are two ways of looking at the same thing, so o believe it’s highlighting the fact that he really is enjoying what he’s doing. But also savoring it and taking his time, he has to bc with all that Ive team you’re bound to get a brain freeze) so while he’s on this corner he’s thoroughly enjoying looking harder at these stoplights looking past the average obvious meaning/message, looking for the why; the answer… using them to try to break the code; to find the hidden meaning and waiting on those “signals” aka stoplights to tell him to stop/go/take it slow. (I had to include the previous line to help define this one)
I’m not sure if this is correct, but there are enzymes in DNA replication of eukaryotic DNA called polymerase delta, and polymerase epsilon… Given her reference earlier to “courting spirals of a coupled double helix”, I’d say that it is at least relevant…
Dessa spells her name using Greek letters, as if it were a code sign she were using over a radio, which makes sense with the following line “is there anyone there?”