The Engine Lyrics

Put your life on loan

Your deed to a new tent home

May bleed ink in rain or fail to gain you the assurances you've known

This town ain't big enough

For me and all of us

So show me your bonefides and if you qualify you can wait for a home

I'm a construction manager

I oversee the destruction

Of my pact with humanity to work in solidarity with

People forming lines and standing in the way

We all have to work

We're connecting over poison on Fridays

On hating the grind, pushing brooms, or hawking dimes; experts in repetition

I rose through the ranks stacking blocks

I'm well intentioned, I'm not selling stocks

But somehow I managed to gentrify the planet a la Brooklyn and San Francisco

I'm a construction manager

I oversee the production

Of fancy new office space with kegerators and a mindful place to

Contemplate the fate of those dislocated in our wake

I'm a construction manager

I oversee the destruction

Of my adopted community with dollar stores and gang graffiti and

Generations of people seeking stability at least nominally

The tower cranes they all look the same

The drones swarm like birds over prey

This is the engine, we are proteins

The bartenders pour sunshine in pint glasses

I work like a surgeon, cutting

Installing steel that'll last a lifetime

Then let the rat race attack it, step back and tap glasses

With the architects and the brokers

Because our work is worth and noble

Providing light to the blighted blocks

Moving problems somewhere else because these back yards are in bloom

I'm a construction manager

I oversee the reduction

Of reality to the future tense, of our best intents to what makes sense so that

Discontent seems fanatical, we'll have integrity in the end

Someone will always argue that there's money left to spend

Just not on them

The tower cranes they all look the same

The drones swarm like birds over prey

This is the engine, we are proteins

The bartenders will sleep in this weekend