Odes to Joy

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (Canonical) · Track 372 · middle

Nobody

Odysseus

Lyrics

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[Verse 1]
Your hands grip the rope like they've memorized
every knot, every fray — your cortex mapping
the arc of home across impossible water.
Ten years of drift, and still your hippocampus
burns bright with her face, the palace
threshold you left, the child you barely knew.
Your neurons fire the same path over,
long-term potentiation carved so deep
no siren song can erase the groove.

[Chorus]
You held yourself bound when the world
whispered sweet surrender,
your grip tighter than desire,
your jaw set against forgetting.
That's the man who walks back.
That's the man I'm singing.

[Verse 2]
The storm rewires you — synaptic plasticity
blooming in every scar tissue, every near-death
teaches your mirror neurons a fiercer grace.
You learn to read the faces of your crew
like constellations, their fear becomes your compass,
your interoception sharp as broken glass.
Myelination thickens around each hard lesson:
how to speak, when to listen, when to burn the bridge.

[Chorus]
You held yourself bound when the world
whispered sweet surrender,
your grip tighter than desire,
your jaw set against forgetting.
That's the man who walks back.
That's the man I'm singing.

[Bridge]
The theta waves of sleep bring no escape —
just dreams of doorways, salt-soaked prophecy.
Your axonal branches reach and reach
toward a future that lives only in the story
you keep telling yourself: *I am coming home.*

[Chorus]
You held yourself bound when the world
whispered sweet surrender,
your grip tighter than desire,
your jaw set against forgetting.
That's the man who walks back.
That's the man I'm singing.

[Outro]
Your ship's prow cuts the wine-dark water.
Your hands remember every rope.
Home is not a place — it's the choice
you made a thousand times to turn the wheel.

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**WORD COUNT: 314 words** ✓
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