Five Bullets and Twenty Cuts

Lyrics

[Verse 1]
Your beard a living flag, each hair a nerve
firing wild across the deck—slow match lit between your teeth,
smoke rising like synaptic bloom, your mirror neurons
reading every face that watches, predicting terror
before the cutlass falls. You knew the map
your own fear drew in others' eyes.

[Chorus]
You turned the ship itself into a thinking body,
every rope a synapse, every sail a cortical map—
your crew's long-term potentiation burned
so deep they'd follow you through any channel,
any storm, because you made them *see* themselves as raiders,
not men.

[Verse 2]
The flag above the bow: your central image,
your theta waves syncing theirs into one pulse,
one breathing thing. Neurogenesis in the hold—
new selves were born there, myelinated fast,
axons branching into bolder shapes. You didn't need to fire.
You'd already remapped every harbor's fear,
proprioception of the coast itself becoming your own body.

[Chorus]
You turned the ship itself into a thinking body,
every rope a synapse, every sail a cortical map—
your crew's long-term potentiation burned
so deep they'd follow you through any channel,
any storm, because you made them *see* themselves as raiders,
not men.

[Bridge]
Your spindle cells were vast—the interoception
of a thousand beating hearts at once, their hunger
your hunger. You weren't cruel. You were *awake*
in ways the sleeping port towns never were.
You made them feel alive.

[Chorus]
You turned the ship itself into a thinking body,
every rope a synapse, every sail a cortical map—
your crew's long-term potentiation burned
so deep they'd follow you through any channel,
any storm, because you made them *see* themselves as raiders,
not men.

[Outro]
And that flag still ripples—black, deliberate,
burning in ten thousand nervous systems,
the most honest thing a human ever flew.