a bullet

Lyrics

​Verse 1
​A copper jacket, a lead-cast core
Forged in a furnace on a factory floor
Stamping out brass by the millions a day
Passing the line where the packers all say:
"It’s just sixty-cents for a small piece of lead,
A handful of change for a handful of dead."
It sits in a box on a dark retail shelf,
A quiet little math that can reckon itself.
No conscience, no malice, no anger, no soul,
Just a fraction of ounces to play out a role.
​Verse 2
​A finger that trembles, a trigger that pulls,
The hammer comes down and the chamber fulfills
The law of the physics, the expansion of gas,
A sudden explosion through shattering glass.
It travels three hundred odd meters a second,
Faster than any forgiveness is reckoned.
The muzzle flash blinds for a blink of an eye,
And sixty-cents flies out to alter the sky.
It tears through the fabric, the muscle, the bone,
And leaves a young boy on the asphalt alone.
​Chorus
​Oh, what is the cost of a bullet?
Don't look at the tag on the till.
You don't pay the price when you buy it,
You pay for the blood that it spills.
It’s measured in minutes that suddenly stop,
In the red on the floor that the janitors mop.
It’s a lifetime of shadows, a seat at the table
Left empty forever, a permanent label.
That’s the cost of a bullet.
​Verse 3
​The sirens are screaming, the red lights rotate,
But the speed of the copper has beaten the state.
The surgeon is rushing, the scrubs are washed blue,
He’s fighting a war that he’s bound to lose too.
Two pints of plasma, a chest cracked wide open,
The monitors beep while the prayers are spoken.
The hospital bill runs to six figures high,
To patch up the holes where the pieces flew by.
But the machinery fails and the flatline rings clear—
The true cost is mounting, the toll is right here.
​Verse 4
​Go walk down the street to a small yellow house,
Where a mother sits down with her hands in her blouse.
She’s looking at pictures of graduation,
A boy who was promised to lead a whole nation.
She pays in the mornings she wakes up to scream,
She pays in the ruins of every single dream.
She pays in the therapy, pays in the pills,
She pays in the winter through shivering chills.
The house is too quiet, the bedroom’s too cold,
The cost of that bullet is growing tenfold.
​Chorus
​Oh, what is the cost of a bullet?
Don't look at the tag on the till.
You don't pay the price when you buy it,
You pay for the blood that it spills.
It’s measured in minutes that suddenly stop,
In the red on the floor that the janitors mop.
It’s a lifetime of shadows, a seat at the table
Left empty forever, a permanent label.
That’s the cost of a bullet.
​Bridge
​It ripples out further, it spreads like a plague,
The neighborhood changes, the future grows vague.
The store on the corner is boarding its glass,
The children are running too frightened for class.
The city adds funding for boxes and cells,
To lock up the shooter where nobody dwells.
Ten thousand a year for the guard and the chain,
To hold a young man who was driven by pain.
So add up the prisons, the courts, and the steel,
The weight of the gavel, the scars that won't heal.
Two lives are over, two families torn,
For a small piece of metal that shouldn't be born.
​Verse 5
​The factory’s running, the machines never tire,
Feeding the market of anger and fire.
They ship out another small box to the coast,
To find a new target, to make a new ghost.
And somewhere a politician stands at a mic,
Talking in circles of what it was like,
While the bean-counters reckon the GDP rise,
Blind to the tears in a grandmother's eyes.
They think it’s an asset, a boom for the trade,
But they don’t see the debt that can never be paid.
​Guitar Solo / Outro
​(The music builds to a heavy, frantic crescendo, mimicking the chaos of the street, before dropping down to a single acoustic guitar strum)
​A handful of change on the counter today.
Sixty-cents flat is the price that they pay.
But it costs a whole block, and it costs a whole town,
And it costs every wall that we’ve built to come down.
It costs us our peace, and it costs us our trust,
Turning a bright future straight into dust.
​Yeah, look at the casing that lays on the ground...
That’s the most expensive thing in this town.
The cost of a bullet.
The cost of a bullet.
Paid in full.
By us all.