Runes Under the Overpass (version 2)

Intro

Fog sits low where the overpass drips slow

Old chalk gone to rust, but the message still shows

Rebar cold as knuckles pressed against stone

Every mark down here was written by somebody who's gone

Verse

Wexler wore three coats, all newspaper-lined

Taught me overpass scripture, written in chalk and grime

Triangle chalked white means the concrete's dry and clear

X in red means the yard bull's circling near

Circle with a dot, there's bread behind the beam

Dash through a diamond means the water ain't clean

He carved his mark with a nail, not a spray can's hiss

Said legends don't need light, just a place that they exist

Fourteen winters old, cardboard soaked to the bone

Watched him read the pillars like a language of his own

Said a false mark gets a drifter killed by first frost

Every symbol on that wall was a warning that cost

Coupling pin took two fingers off his left hand

Still he chalked his numbers steady, still could understand

Said the rail don't forgive but the wall remembers true

Taught me survival's a language, and I'm fluent too

Chorus

Runes under the overpass, read before you rest

Every mark's a debt got paid, every scar's a test

Some men leave a name, I leave a sign instead

Read the wall right, you rise — read it wrong, you're dead

Verse

Now I'm grown, chalk turned to ink on a page

Still marking triangles where the young ones cage

Traded boxcars for booth time, same cold math

Every hook's a symbol pointing back to that path

Label came sniffing, tried to paint their own sign

Told 'em the wall's mine, the language ain't for rh