The Crest

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