Pommelhorse - Armand Hammer, Curly Castro

It started as a lesson of achieving dreams and reaching fantastical heights

Ended with us watching the Challenger rocket smoldering on the black and white

Flame licked flame, like lovers do

Feelings bum rush logic, tend to tumble through, pardon who

Open sky, click the box, they cut the lights in the room

In the summer before 9/11, I slept with my boots on where I could

This ain’t no boo-hoo retelling, I was still killing my square, I was good

I got where I needed to be a few days before we breathed different

Hammering horseshoes, a pale horse is fitting

Clean entrance, blood stamped, services rendered, paid in full

Booming succession, I’m on the roof across the river

Every nerve at attention, no reception, soul in suspension

I’m grounded but sinked into African burial ground from here to Seneca village

You can’t dig a hole fast enough, deep enough, wide as fuck

Built for comfort, not for speed

Peak optimization of Earth, digest the meat

Scream therapy

Coaxing melodies from the noise

You know, I never lost my song

When the moon and the planet and the stars collapse

Collapse, collapse, collapse, collapse

When the planet and the stars and the moon collapse

Collapse, collapse, collapse, collapse

When the stars and the moon and the planet collapse

Collapse, collapse, collapse, collapse

When the moon and the planet and the stars collapse

Collapse, collapse, collapse, collapse

With that mortgage, tornado insurance

That house will be my old lady’s coffin

Ill winds, more often snatch negroes off porches

Took the curtain down, Oz

Corporation to corporation remorseless

Bureaucrats cautious, calling corporate, calling corporate

Wind rattle your shingle, gavel bang

Now you human chattel, the king thought to mingle with the rabble

Fell back leaking

The people, with claws reaching, eyes like sequins

While candles glow, play my mother’s piano in a bando

Dueling banjoes, get money (get money)

But these pennies feel like they can cover manholes

Shoot hick cops, Rambo, Mujaheddin still on

A simpler time, busting Mexican brick into dime

Feeling like Pennywise, what a time to be alive

Tackle over chicken thighs, Church’s fried

Boarded up, we still inside, goat’s hide

While you fuck jealous

Might trip you on the stairs to the cellar

Show you forever, together, numb, great

Sichuan pepper sprayed awake

The leper’ll tell you straight

Family and friends’ll lie to your face

Lie to the last day

Lie after that while you molder in the grave

When the moon and the planet and the stars collapse

Collapse, collapse, collapse, collapse

When the planet and the stars and the moon collapse

Collapse, collapse, collapse, collapse

When the stars and the moon and the planet collapse

Collapse, collapse, collapse, collapse

When the moon and the planet and the stars collapse

Collapse, collapse, collapse, collapse

My brother wanted to build a zoo, he wanted to build a utopia.

Because when he

looked around him, all he seen was destruction in our neighborhood,

you know what I’m saying?

How much, how much did it cost to feed a tiger, like for a week?

Shit, man, yo, that cost families, man, you know what I’m saying?

Sometimes you know, you got money coming in, sometimes you don’t got money

coming in, so the grind is crazy, you understand what I’m saying?

Sometimes I had to go in the supermarket and take chicken

So if it got hungry, did you get scared?

If that shit got hungry, then I had to go take chicken