What I Was Afraid Of · Track 4 · middle
AK-47
AK-47 — Kalashnikov assault rifle. Register: modern. This song is sung BY this weapon, in first person, about the one thing IT was afraid of. Find the fear that is true of this specific object, not a generic one.
No audio yet — generation pending.
Lyrics
[Intro] I was born with space between my moving parts. Room for the river mud to fall right through. You can bury me in a flooded trench, pull me up, and I will still speak true. I am nine pounds of wood and steel. I don't choke when the weather turns to hell, I do what I was built to do too well. [Chorus] But I never learned how to break. That is the nightmare of my design. I outlive the men who carry me, I just wait in the grass for the next in line. And I watch the hands. I watch the hands. The hands just keep getting smaller. [Verse 2] The selector lever scrapes a silver arc down the side of my stamped receiver frame. I don't require a soldier's careful touch, I don't care if you even know my name. I bypass thought and settle in the nerve, I just become the pointing of your arm. You don't have to study how I work, you just have to want to do the harm. [Bridge] They put my silhouette on national flags. They press me out by the million in the dark. I am the cheap arithmetic of the age, leaving my thirty-round mark. I wanted to rust. I wanted to freeze in the cold. I wanted to be something a child couldn't hold. [Chorus] I never learned how to break. That is the nightmare of my design. I outlive the men who carry me, I just wait in the grass for the next in line. And I watch the hands. I watch the hands. The hands just keep getting smaller. [Outro] The clearance is loose. The mechanism is perfectly dumb. You drop me, and another boy comes. You feel so light against my stock. How old are you? I never break.