What I Was Afraid Of · Track 38 · middle
MG 42
MG 42 — German WWII machine gun. Register: ancient. 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] Spear-tip, broadsword, flintlock, blade. You worked in the intimate dark. [Verse 1] You felt the pressure the collarbone made, The yielding of the heart. I was folded from steel in 1943, Born with no time for the known. They fed me a belt of geometry, And told me to harvest the snow. [Chorus] Twenty rounds a second, tearing the gray, A single canvas ripping in the cold. I never saw a single man break. That is the terror I hold. I did not kill them, I just erased the space, A mechanical wind blowing through the wood. I left no names, I met no gaze, Just an empty field where a generation stood. [Verse 2] I drank the ammunition until I was sick, Until the steel of my throat glowed white. The loader reaching with the asbestos mitt, To pull the ruined barrel to the right. He dropped my smoking tongue into the frost, Slid a cold one in, and locked the frame. His shoulder forgot what it was to be soft, It was only a bracket to carry the flame. [Bridge] You ancient things, you took them face to face. You gave them a second to recognize the end. I was an engine of pure erase, A frequency you cannot comprehend. I was not a weapon. I was a weather front. [Chorus] Twenty rounds a second, tearing the gray, A single canvas ripping in the cold. I never saw a single man break. That is the terror I hold. I did not kill them, I just erased the space, A mechanical wind blowing through the wood. I left no names, I met no gaze, Just an empty field where a generation stood. [Outro] Now I hang on a hook in a quiet room. The glass is clean. The war is done. I listen to the ticking of the clock, And I pray to be fired. Just once.