Local Oscillator

[Verse 1]
You're scraping the grease trap at D'Angelo's on Grant Street, November's on your neck.
The cold from the concrete seeps through the sole of your shoe, you're a human ground-check.
Remember counting quarters on the bus stop bench, the vinyl seat was cracked?
Each coin felt like a contact point for a promise you couldn't get back.
The manager's breath smelled like Folgers and failure, a low-voltage hum.
You'd trace the rebar patterns in the pavement 'til your fingers went numb.
That was the winter of the third-shift defrost, praying the engine would turn.
A different kind of cold start, a lesson you were built to learn.

[Chorus]
Now you're a local oscillator on a fifty-foot screen.
A cathode-ray promise, all static and clean.
And the beat stumbles—a ghost in the machine.
Did you ever think you'd be… this seen?

[Verse 2]
Then the screen glows, it's a number you ain't seen in a thousand weeks.
It's Rico. A screenshot. The caption just speaks.
"Bro is that YOU on the 80/94 split??" with a string of them fire emojis.
You flash back to sharing a thermos of chicory on a curb, pretending to be cozy.
That Louisiana warmth your grandma packed up, fighting that Lake Michigan wind.
The smell of her spices still stuck on the jacket you long since rescinded.
He was talking 'bout Audis, you were talking 'bout wiring a plug without dying.
Two signals on different bands, both of you trying.

[Chorus]
Now you're a local oscillator on a fifty-foot screen.
A cathode-ray promise, all static and clean.
And the beat stumbles—a ghost in the machine.
Did you ever think you'd be… this seen?

[Bridge]
So you tell me, man in the sky, what's the frequency?
Is the gain worth the noise in the signal you send back to me?
Is this a closed circuit with a steady-state glow?
Or just a new kind of rust, setting in slow?

[Outro]
You're a local oscillator on a fifty-foot screen...
(beat cuts)
Still smells like the grease.