Every little renaissance is echoed in the colosseum

Empty off the walls of Tin Pan Alley (alley)

Til the space between the skin and shirt grows thin

Til the cells of flesh and material

Are indistinguishable under a microscope

Til all the water goes gas and the potholes pop

After the day's gone dark

And the next chord's struck out of necessity (necessi-necessities x2)

And they peel the paper from the walls

Or pick another color paint

And the next chord echoes like shrinking nickels

In a metal elevator falling single file size order

Through the hole in your pocket landing round

A silhouette of the threat of silence

The lifespan of the flight path of a slowly sinking skipping stone

The dying light of the law's dying bells

The timespan between wave crests is what makes the crest the crest

(What)

I know the temptation to straighten the spines

Of men hunched from years of keeping nickels in their shirt pockets

To lift these wood men from the pines

And, in one jerk, snap every bone, disk, and plate in place

Like adjusting some rusty segmented piece of an erector set from the 1950s

But the human spine is an iron rod

And, when bent, needs time and heat to make straight

And it's easier to fill front pockets with nickels

Than it is to make a cold metal supple

The lifespan of the flight path of a slowly sinking skipping stone

The dying light of the law's dying bells

The timespan between wave crests is what makes the crest the crest