Narrative Rap

He steps out shaky from the wake and bakey,
Blinking owlish in the too-bright sunlight, maybe
He'll look both ways before crossing the street
Or not, he's devil-may-care with his feet
Doesn't feel connected to any part of his body
It's mind over matter but his thinking is shoddy,
He's too lost in the moment to be critical now
He's city-living and yet unaware of his surroundings
Focusing on the stuttering walk-this-line sound
Of the balls underneath him that've lost their bounce
And every rumbling car that strikes him as too loud
He mistakes for the bus that'll take him to town,
But it's like shining a light through a wedding gown:
Bitter-sweet dead whiteness that he lost and found,
So no red-eye contact, keep your head to the ground
And hope the ennui is just coming down.

The windows on the bus are splintered two-way mirrors
The interior's in reverse and he sees out there
That everybody's broken but he's the only one scared
Of not being able to die happy when death is near,
Cuz it's a slippery slope from school to job to career
And if you find yourself at the bottom with a mountain to bear
Hope to god you've got an atlas to point your way up
Hope to hell that what you've been through has made you strong enough
Because we're all ill-equipped, and it's all too much
For creatures of false-order to bear the cluster-fuck
For barely evolved apes to know life and to love
To know that no matter what we do we're just a handful of dust
So he keeps turning up the music to drive out the bus
Full of people full to bursting with empty bluffs
But he calls and checks and keeps returning to drugs
Better that than allow yourself to think of -

It's his stop, he steps off, and thanks the driver
Telling him, “You're no different than the average rider.”
Walks to the cemetery gates and past it,
And looks dead-on at the open casket.