CLINE AVENUE GOSPEL

[Verse 1]
(Cold open, vocals before beat)
Oh, Cline, you concrete skeleton, I'm at your feet again
The summer of '09, the taste of ozone on the wind before the rain set in
We used to climb the guardrail, watch the slag heaps gleam like sleeping gods below
Felt like the only high-voltage line the whole damn state would ever know
Your rebar showing through the surface like a fractured bone, a final, faded blush
And everything worth loving made the same low, tired, metallic hush
You were the future once, a promise cast in aggregate and rust
Now you're the quiet sermon whispered in a cloud of foundry dust.

[Chorus]
They say a city dies in whispers, not a bang
I hear your girders sing the hymn of rusted fangs
So let it all fall down, a slow and holy grace
We're just the last light fading on this place.

[Verse 2]
My grandma's kitchen smelled of chicory, andouille on the stove
She'd say, "That bridge ain't God, son, it's just steel and borrowed hope."
But from the top, I saw the grid laid out, a circuit board I'd trace
The blinking lights on distant towers, every diode in its place
Felt the low-grade current humming from the rail yard to my shoes
The kind of phantom energy a city can't afford to lose
You were the main transformer for the dreams we couldn't ground
A beautiful catastrophe just waiting to come down.

[Chorus]
They say a city dies in whispers, not a bang
I hear your girders sing the hymn of rusted fangs
So let it all fall down, a slow and holy grace
We're just the last light fading on this place.

[Bridge]
(Beat breaks down to just the banjo loop, deep percussion, and 808 pulse. Lead vocal stops. Sparse, auto-tuned ad-libs fill the space.)
(Yeah...)
(Let it fall...)
(A slow hum...)
(Uh-huh... that holy grace...)
(Just let it fall...)
(Fading...)

[Outro]
The transformers hum a final, quiet prayer
Just chicory and iron on the air.