The Cigarette from His Lips (Annie Oakley)

Lyrics

[Verse 1]
Your finger curved around the trigger like it knows
exactly where the target lives before the shot,
your eye adjusting faster than your conscious mind can follow—
that's predictive coding firing through your brain,
your motor cortex mapping every grain of air
between the barrel and the ring of light you'll split.
The playing cards don't stand a chance.

[Chorus]
You shoot the future into being,
watch it shatter into proof,
your hands remember what your eyes predicted,
every bullet writes the truth,
synaptic pathways carved so deep
they're highways now, they're home,
you shoot the future into being—
and nothing's ever unknown.

[Verse 2]
Your mirror neurons fire when you watch another shooter
and you steal their form, their breath, their angle,
cortical remapping rewires every shot you've taken,
thousands burning grooves so clean
the muscle remembers what the mind forgets to doubt,
each repetition lays fresh myelin down,
insulation speeding up the signal from intention straight to action—
you're wired now for perfect.

[Chorus]
You shoot the future into being,
watch it shatter into proof,
your hands remember what your eyes predicted,
every bullet writes the truth,
synaptic pathways carved so deep
they're highways now, they're home,
you shoot the future into being—
and nothing's ever unknown.

[Bridge]
Long-term potentiation holding every triumph in your hippocampus,
theta waves consolidating confidence through sleep and waking,
your proprioception knows the gun before you touch it,
interoception reads your heartbeat like a metronome—
steady, steady, ready.

[Chorus]
You shoot the future into being,
watch it shatter into proof,
your hands remember what your eyes predicted,
every bullet writes the truth,
synaptic pathways carved so deep
they're highways now, they're home,
you shoot the future into being—
and nothing's ever unknown.

[Outro]
The card twirls through the air,
your finger doesn't hesitate,
it splits clean down the middle,
just like you promised it would.

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**WORD COUNT: 304 words** ✓