Odin's Overtime (version 2)

Intro

Clock punches red at eleven, gate creaks and hums

Ladle glows like a second sun nobody sees

Denny lost his left eye pouring plate back in eighty-two

Said the furnace only pays you back in things you can't retrieve

Verse

Third shift bell and the floor still breathing heat

Boots stick to ash where the day crew left retreat

Clocked in half-blind, one flash burn from July

Cracked my safety glass, didn't blink, didn't ask why

Mama's rent past due, my brother's cast still fresh

Four-hundred pound ladle, I carry it like a debt

Denny taught the pour before he lost the sight

Said the eye you give up teaches you to read the light

Sparks land on my collarbone like static, stay and set

Scar's a signature, the foundry's how I sign my check

Six years on this floor, I know the furnace by its hum

Know which valve sticks, know which brother's overcome

Tired ain't a word here, it's a tax you pay in full

Overtime's the altar and the punch clock is the bull

I bow low to the pour, I don't bow to the ache

Every scar's a lesson that the fire wouldn't fake

Chorus

Traded an eye for the fire's low glow

Odin's overtime, that's the only way I know

Wisdom don't come cheap, it comes scarred and slow

Odin's overtime, that's the only way I know

Verse

Denny's cane taps concrete like he's counting out a debt

Says the young ones flinch at heat they haven't earned yet

I remember flinching too, the day the metal spit

Caught my forearm, left a river where the vein used to sit

He never called it courage, called it paying what you owe

Said the gate don't open twice for men who quit too slow

Watched him teach the pour with one good eye still sharp

Reading angles off the melt like scripture off the dark

Now the young boy on my line, hands shaking on the ladle

I tell him steady breathing beats a grip that's just unstable

Same words Denny gave me underneath the same tin roof

Same ash falling slow like snow that's carrying the proof

Twelve years since his last shift, cane still by the door

Foundry kept his name stitched into every plate we pour

I don't chase the wage no more, I chase what he left behind

A ledger made of scar tissue, a debt paid overtime

Chorus

Traded an eye for the fire's low glow

Odin's overtime, that's the only way I know

Wisdom don't come cheap, it comes scarred and slow

Odin's overtime, that's the only way I know

Bridge

They ask me why I stayed when the wage never changed

I say the gold ain't in the paycheck, it's in what the fire arranged

Every scar's a sentence in a book nobody sells

Every pour's a prayer that the old man used to tell

Outro

Gate hums shut at seven, ash settles on the floor

Denny's cane still leaning where it leaned the night before

One eye on the fire, one eye paid in full

That's the only inheritance a furnace ever pulled