Crooked through Straight

(Intro – free time → band enters in 7/8, no vocals)

⸻

(Verse 1 – 4/4 vocals over shifting riff)

Steel hull, paper crown

Claims the current will bow down

Narrow vein, tight and thin

Every empire’s failed within

Measured depth, waved away

Warnings filed and left to fade

Straight lines don’t always hold

When the hand won’t do what it’s told

⸻

(Pre-Chorus – 3/4 for lift)

Signal lost in mirrored glass

Every warning slips right past

You don’t bend a living vein

It resists, it clamps, it strains

⸻

(Chorus – 4/4, strong anchor)

Crooked trying to move through straight

Grinding angles into fate

Pressure building, seals won’t hold

Peace was fragile long before

Thread the needle, split the seam

Water won’t obey your scheme

You can push but it won’t care

What you break stays broken there

⸻

(Verse 2 – 4/4 vocals, riff cycles 5/4 underneath)

Tide remembers every scar

Wreckage tells you where you are

Ghosts of fleets that thought the same

No one left to take the blame

Weight of steel against the wall

Narrow margins, rising call

Currents shift but don’t give way

They just wait and let you pay

⸻

(Breakdown – instruments in 7/8 + 4/4 overlay, minimal vocals)

Force it

Force it

Watch it give

…no

Walls don’t move

You’re what bends

⸻

(Bridge – 3/4, almost hymn-like)

Who is like unto the beast

Who can wage a war at sea

When the path is not a path

But a line you cannot see

Waters don’t divide on claim

No command can stake that name

Every step you try to take

Pulls you deeper in the wake

⸻

(Final Chorus – 4/4, full weight)

Crooked trying to move through straight

Now the current recalibrates

Every fracture amplified

Nothing left to override

Thread the needle, watch it tear

You made the break, now live in there

You can push with all your weight

Still you cannot change the strait

⸻

(Outro – instruments drift back into odd time)

Bent line, still misaligned

You don’t cross… you redefine