Brown Bess musket

Lyrics

[Intro]
[Verse 1]
You hung me up above the mantelpiece
Ten and a half pounds of walnut and iron
You polish the brass till the centuries cease
And tell your guests I was the king’s own lion
You aim me at the window, sighting down the barrel
Squinting like a hunter in the light
Your shoulder flinches backward just before the hammer falls
Bracing for a kick that won't arrive tonight

[Chorus]
But don't ask me to pick a single man
Don't make me look a target in the face
I was never built to understand
The quiet arithmetic of empty space
I need the smoke, I need the drum, I need the blinding line
Where killing isn’t murder, just a chore
My only terror is this solitary crime
A seventy-one ball in a seventy-five bore
Bouncing in the dark.

[Verse 2]
I have no grooves to make the bullet spin
I am a smooth and unrepentant throat
Since 1722 we stood in rows of fifty, breathing in
The sulfur from a bitten paper coat
If you fired me alone across a grassy open field
I’d wander to the left or catch the breeze
I relied on my brothers to make the column yield
To bring a singing empire to its knees

[Chorus]
So don't ask me to pick a single man
Don't make me look a target in the face
I was never built to understand
The quiet arithmetic of empty space
I need the smoke, I need the drum, I need the blinding line
Where killing isn’t murder, just a chore
My only terror is this solitary crime
A seventy-one ball in a seventy-five bore
Bouncing in the dark.

[Bridge]
You think I am an instrument of will
A surgeon’s blade that cuts exactly where you point

I was a bludgeon made to vomit and to spill
Until the fog of war unhinged the joint
I never knew who fell. I only knew the roar.

[Guitar Solo]

[Outro]
Take me off the wall.
Put me in a crowd.
I cannot bear the silence of this room.
If I have to be a weapon, make it loud.
I don't know how to shoot without the gloom.
I don't know how to choose just one.

Just one.