Who Marks the One Who Marks Others

Lyrics

Found you under a blanket of moss.
Two thousand five hundred meters up.
Central New Guinea highlands, where the air is cool and thin.
And you don't belong here.

Wood, not of this place.
Carved with a hand I think I know.
The spiral isn't a fern, it's a history.
The notch isn't random, it's a breath held tight.
I can almost hear the tap of the uhi,
the albatross bone on skin.
But this wasn't made for skin.
This was for… what? A secret self?

Clean Canvas Chris, they called you.
Back home in Aotearoa.
Your hands drew the lineage on a thousand jaws, a thousand thighs.
You gave them their armor, their story, their whakapapa.
So who marks the one who marks everyone else?
Who puts the needle to the artist's own skin?

I picture you, working in the quiet.
The client's trust, a heavy, sacred thing.
Their blood and the ink mixing under your fingers.
You were the keeper of the indelible lines.
And then you walked away from the sea,
away from the long white cloud.
Carried this, your own heartwood,
into a forest that speaks another language entirely.

Clean Canvas Chris, an empty page.
Your hands drew the lineage on a thousand jaws, a thousand thighs.
You gave them their armor, their story, their whakapapa.
So who marks the one who marks everyone else?
Who puts the needle to the artist's own skin?

Maybe this piece of wood… this is your skin.
The story you couldn't wear.
The lines you couldn't bear to see in any mirror.
You left your own moko here, in the damp earth.
A map of the man who holds the chisel.
A story told only to the vines and the mist.
Proof that the clean canvas… bleeds too.

I hold it in my hand.
It's heavy.
It feels so heavy.
Who marks you, Chris?
Who marks you?