[Soulstice]

A Stitch in Time

At this point the ancient terminus is rusted and worn
Where conductors have ushered hundreds of bustling hordes
Running, feet stomping like thunderous storms, people hustle aboard
So packed you couldn't bring another speck of dust on the tour
But there's nothing - just you and yourself at Station One
& the sky's sallow glow as shadows grow beneath the fading sun
Your face is numb, & your mind, you're powerless to control
Focused on the billowing smoke and the towering commodes
It's souring your soul, you've only heard stories and seen relatives
That return, and seem as they've been treated with dream desiccants
You breath, negligent to the bells and the large light approaching
The silhouette on horizon reminds you how hard life is becoming
The desolate silence is numbing, you retreat deeper in thought
Uncontrollably sink into a dreamscape until your hopelessly lost

This is the place, you remember it, it's perpetual excellence
Only this time this place is even more dressed up in decadence
So special, the scent of it, the smiling faces and shining sun
You'll see every single tooth before the time is done
The vibrant sun, the arctic chill, whichever you recall is stronger
You take a seat to stay, stay just a little while longer
Denial conjures strange illusions, the clocks have frozen in place
You'll stay forever in this apartment or this rosy estate
Worries floating away, and one last time a toast to freedom
Your senses dull and then you laugh as if you're s'posed to need em
Perfect hues in glowing sequence, in a dress she flips her hair
It was always your favorite color, that sexy, golden mare
Over there, the perfect place - you'll bring it with you 'till your dead
And then a bell, and then a whistle, and SMASH you've hit your head

Dizzy and jolted back to the present, a disasters presented
In passive aggressive....
Daydreaming, forgetting you've hopped in your cab
That's bringing you somewhere impossibly fast
You glance at the window - totally unseemly and strange
Did you miss your stop? While you were daydreaming away?

Blacktop Dreams

Trace the concrete vein of the mausoleum
To the womb of the city in a stage of ovulation
Where the pavement's often sacred - past the steel titans
Past the art school martyr until you reach where real life is
Where you feel lifeless - and the struggle's plainly contagious
A thousand hearts anchored in a graveyard for slave ships
Men emblazoned with a makeshift mark of the beast
That runs through their blood and makes it harder to leave
Hard to charter their dreams, so they resign them to fate
And sit through crackling static and try to find an escape..

Blazing trails in his throwback - today he's Clyde The Glide
Envisions the court but his soul's trapped in a survival guide
So he tries to hide from a looming fate shooting HORSE at baskets
So he puts on two-two and his shoes: worn and tattered
Then the dormant magic comes out and he can hear the sounds
The gray tombstone backdrop eclipsed by a cheering crowd
That's nearing loud as an imaginary Jordan drains a three
He's gotta match - nervous, he bends his shaking knees
Recreates the scene - of the duels of Ninety-Two
Takes a bounce, looks down the line... and shoots

A city studded with cardboard huts and commonplace vagabonds
That speak to men in dialects like a modern day Babylon
Lips spray erratic songs - the stanzas scripted on faces
The lyrics bear down on their eyelids - intrinsically painted
The Missal of vagrants - recited upon their bed of brick
A dream becomes a specter and then tends to stick
And mock their intended wish that's been forcefully twisted
Into airport nightlights that define an aborted existence
The source of the kismet is the curse of the dirty ventricles
of the cast iron kingdom submerged in thirty canticles
Of these deserted animals as they hum the same old song
About a dark-clouded ceiling fan .. as the rain goes on

H...
.. Now his enemy fades away from the elbow
he follows him up to a taunting chorus of "Hell No"

Twilight brings us several scarecrow silhouettes
Draped in smoke and dust - some billowed threats
The reason for the pillow debt - heads stuffed with feathers
Of the same birds that drink blood together..
That's why their cuffed and tethered to the bird cage
Locked up by the zeitgeist that decided to turn page
On this disturbed age - a road less traveled turns to a beaten path
Trying not to succumb to a soul unraveled by the heated wrath
Of the street, in fact - the playgrounds capsule felony
Jump-rope with the noose to a shrapnel melody
A lack of revery - they're hanging from their family tree
Bloodz in the blood - can't fight what they're damned to be

O
Now the reverse lay-up, a staple of Maravich
He tries to spin it in, but the crowd screams and laughs at him


The urban wasteland's a labyrinth, and theres maps in syringes
A Red X and a dotted line that can bring fact to existence
When your trapped in a vision of dust and cadavers
There's only one golden key to adjust the aperture
And it lies in rusted catheters or a cold line of escape
That gets locked in a vein as they're defying their fate
But it silently scrapes at the walls of the heart
And turns every empty skin sack to something falling apart
That's the ominous start to the strung-out puppet addled century
The city Zeitgeist goes from chaos to peace back to entropy
It's the blackest destiny - actually, it's the one way to see the sun
But most are back on the tarmac before freedom's won
The bleeding lungs - the song's played on a broken organ
Of a population choked up on smoke in hopeless portions

R
..behind the backboard - almost impossible, but Jordan does it
Clyde's nervous, in a hole.. but he thinks the score is nothing

And this city is virtually an enormous castle
Surrounded by many denizens torn and scattered
Forced to battle for the scraps of the red meat
From the window of the tower that falls upon dead feet
The poor are sore and their breath's weak - packed in a moat
Of muck and mire - where the sires casually row
In boats that actually floats - unlike the alien dreaming
Bread crumb surplus brings these rats to extraneous breeding
They're scraping the ceiling - in a low riser east of the castle
Harvesting destiny so it's simply just feed for the cattle
A road most frequently travel - paved with public housing
& food stamps & the upper class's disgust resounding
What's astounding is the tightened intrinsic manacles
That define empty pockets as a whole different animal

S!
Now the simple foul shot - he's gotta make it to survive
Or he'll face the fate that he hates to recognize..


He lets the ball fly through the air in the thick of certain misery
Like the arc of his shot could change the curve of history
.
.
It's spinning downward - a ray of hope - a magic reverie?
But as the ball floats downward, he turns his back to destiny
.
.
He hears neither a CLANG! nor a SWOOSH!
....
So he doesn't stick up his chin nor hold his head
Just walks back into the city with an open end.