Rebar Saints

[Verse 1]
Jones on the Cline Avenue Bridge, October '09, spitting from the edge
The rebar skeleton bleeds rust on his Nikes, he ain't feeling the dread
Just the low-end vibration, the freight car percussion
The US Steel cough and the endless discussion
Of who left and who's staying, who's working the line
He just traces the grid with a thumb, killing time
Smell of the slag heap hot on the breeze, the Lake Michigan freeze
Watching semis below him move slow through the skeletal trees.

[Chorus]
Grid hum, steel lung
That's where the rebar saints come from
Grid hum, steel lung
That's where the rebar saints come from

[Verse 2]
Mama said 'That boy sees the bolts in the walls, not the pictures we hung'
He could tell you the stress-points on structures since he was young
Never trusting the drywall, just the frame underneath
The cold, honest logic of concrete and wreath
of girders and pylons, a blueprint he knew
Felt the city's whole weight, what was false, what was true
In the sag of a roofline, the groan of a floor
Heard a language in decay they were all trying to ignore.

[Bridge]
No prayer, just the tonnage
A quiet kind of homage
To the things that don't buckle
Underneath all the trouble.

[Outro]
Grid hum. Steel lung.
Yeah. That's where they come from.