Iron Psalms for the Unpaid (Version 2)

Intro

Scrapyard hums like a choir with no pews

Furnace glow the only gold I ever knew

Grandfather's scrip still rattling in a coffee tin

Company paid in tokens, called that living

Verse

Talk about company town, paid in tin not green

Mill whistle screamed at five, dressed him in machine

He forged the rail plates that the trains would ride

Never owned a ticket, never left that side

Scrip in his pocket, spent it at the company store

Same hand that built the tracks couldn't afford the door

Fifty cents a plate and a cough he called his wage

Black lung was the pension when he turned the page

Buried with his hammer 'cause the bank wouldn't pay

Choir didn't sing loud enough to carry him away

So I kept his ledger, kept the numbers he wrote

Every notch a Sunday that never got a coat

Now I melt his silence down at two AM

Furnace roaring louder than the debt owed to him

Pour it into molds shaped like his open palm

Every casting that I make is an iron psalm

Chorus

Iron psalms for the unpaid, hammer keeps the time

Melt the chain to make the tool, that's the only rhyme

Every plate we forged for free still holds the bridge

Iron psalms for the unpaid, that's the only wage

Verse

I work the yard on Fifth where the gates go to die

Rusted through with names nobody bothered why

Pull the iron off a fence that jailed a family in

Melt it till it's clean, forge it new again

Twelve hour shift, same sun grandpa used to burn

Difference is I'm paid, but the ache's the one I earn

Scrapyard dog named Ledger sleeps under the crane

Watches me pour molten like it's holy rain

Sparks land on my forearm, scar next to his scar

Same map, different decade, same iron, same star

Boss man calls it labor, I call it a psalm

Every tool I temper is a callus turned to calm

Sold my first batch of plows to a farmer down the road

Told him where the iron came from, told him what it owed

He just nodded slow, said his father knew the mill

Said the debt got paid in something ledgers never fill

Chorus

Iron psalms for the unpaid, hammer keeps the time

Melt the chain to make the tool, that's the only rhyme

Every plate we forged for free still holds the bridge

Iron psalms for the unpaid, that's the only wage

Bridge

Found a scrip coin melted at the bottom of the pour

Grandfather's number stamped where it never was before

Didn't scrap it, didn't sell it, set it in the frame

Of the gate I built the church, so it could hold his name

Fire don't erase you, fire just makes you true

Every plate that holds a weight is a hymn he's singing through

Outro

Furnace cooling now, the psalm is in the steel

Ledger's closed but every gate still knows the deal

Paid in fire, paid in scars, paid in what remains

Iron doesn't forget the hands, it just wears their names