Clockless Lovers

[Verse 1]
You bring theorems
He brings thumb wars
One scribbles galaxies on napkins
One eats the napkins by mistake
You quote dead languages
He mispronounces his own name
Obvious as a lighthouse
Yet my compass spins in gravy
[Pre-Chorus]
Blame the ticking
Right?
That metronomic tyrant
Those calendar chains
Rust on my ankles
[Chorus]
Screw time
That counterfeit tyrant in the sky
Sand in a glass
Pretending to be law
Just gravity dressed up as a judge
Screw time
It stretches fools into legends
Turns geniuses into clocks on a wall
I want a choice that doesn’t age
[Verse 2]
You draft constellations on receipts
Name them after minor Greek tragedies
He calls every star "big lamp"
Still laughs like spilled marbles
I know the postulate
Choose the sharper mind
The sharper life
Yet my heart is a slow parliament
Arguing in obsolete dialects
[Chorus]
Screw time
That counterfeit tyrant in the sky
Sand in a glass
Pretending to be law
Just gravity dressed up as a judge
Screw time
It stretches fools into legends
Turns geniuses into clocks on a wall
I want a choice that doesn’t age
[Bridge]
What if hours are hallucinations
Just herd animals we brand and count
What if forever is a room
Where both of you are already waiting
Your brilliance
His bewilderment
Two altars in the same cathedral
I pace the nave in circles
Praying for a clockless dawn
[Chorus]
Screw time
Let it crack
Let its numbers melt
Let the idiom and the idiot stay
Side by side on my unruled page
Screw time
If it’s a hoax
I’m free to choose
The labyrinth
The lucid
Or both
And live in the pause between beats

Smoky art-pop ballad at a heavy, unhurried tempo; male vocals, close-mic and intimate. Cello bows long, dissonant swells; floor toms and distant kick form a lumbering heartbeat. Bagpipes slide in on pre-chorus and bloom in the last chorus as a droning, bittersweet choir. Sparse piano doubles the vocal rhythm on key phrases. Final section strips back to voice and low cello, ending on a hanging note., slow, cello