Hymn to Pan Before Ignition (Jack Parsons)

Lyrics

[Verse 1]
There was a boy before the boy
who couldn't tell the dog from the cat
who drew the same circle forty times
and every time the circle bent

His parents kept a list
of everything the boy could not become
They folded it into a suitcase
and flew somewhere the laws
dissolve in saline

[Pre-Chorus]
The clinic smelled like plumeria and refrigerant
They unwound his helices on a foreign table
and when they wound them back
the gaps were gone
and so was he

[Chorus]
They finished the boy
like a sentence someone else started
They finished the boy
and the new one tested beautifully
He could name the bones in seven languages
could catch what others dropped
could hear the pitch beneath the pitch
but when he looked for Jules
Jules was already
in the archive

[Verse 2]
He chose the farthest chair in every room
the outpost where the wormhole hums
the frontier where the medicine
still has dirt on it
because proximity
was the only distance
that felt like his own decision

His best friend was an engineer
who never asked what's underneath
They threw darts in a bar
where the gravity was borrowed
and every bullseye
was a thing he chose to miss

[Pre-Chorus]
The tailor knew
The tailor always knew
because tailors understand
what happens when you cut a pattern
from someone else's cloth

[Chorus]
They finished the boy
like a sentence someone else started
They finished the boy
and the new one graduated second
not first — on purpose —
because the preganglionic fumble
was the only thing
he ever got to fail at
and failing was the closest thing
to being Jules again

[Bridge]
His teddy bear survived both versions
stitched at five by hands
that hadn't yet been optimized
The first surgery — thread and cotton —
was the only one
where the patient kept his name

Somewhere in the limbic folds
the thalamus still whispers
in the old cadence
the one before the rewiring
a six-year-old syllable
that tastes like warm milk
and not knowing the answer

[Final Chorus]
They finished the boy
because they loved the boy
and love on that planet
was a scalpel dressed as a lullaby
They finished the boy
and the man who woke
spent every year since then
practicing frontier medicine
on himself
trying to find the seam
where Jules became someone
who saves everyone
except the version
who needed saving first

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