Bloodlines in the City (Version 2)

Verse

Eight hundred feet of rusted pipe beneath my heel

Wet concrete floor — the river runs for real

Every tenement built on what they called a debt

Water bill paid by men who never got to be set free

I was a kid with boots at seven, down in the drain where the cold comes through

Some old man's voice calling up from underneath me too

He said this city's bloodline runs not in gold or name —

It runs in every leak — it bleeds by every flame

I learned to seal the cracks before they find their mouth

Before one family starves because another didn't count

Every tap I fix is a border nobody drew

Water doesn't ask whose name it flows through

Pre-Chorus

So how do you answer when the bill comes due —

Not in gold or glory — what you give to keep it true?

The city don't ask who your father was or what you own

It only asks if you can close off every hole that's open —

And I say no — we bleed together, this is home

Every crack stays sealed so the water keeps on flowing

Chorus

I am the pipe that holds it all — not a king nor prince —

I'm the hand under every roof before the wind comes in —

Bloodlines run through the sewer — bloodlines don't have names —

This is the city's pulse — I keep it warm beneath the frames

Verse

Twenty-five years and there isn't a pipe that I built right through

Tunnel walls hold what nobody was paid to do

Water doesn't judge — water just runs — it never stops —

Every leak I fixed before it found its mouth, I kept them off the streets

The old man's voice is gone now — but the name he left me in

I put up a plaque down by the drain where every generation bled

Said here's the real history — not gold or steel that stands

This is what our ancestors built with their own two hands

Pre-Chorus

So how do you answer when the bill comes due —

Not in gold or glory — what you give to keep it true?

The city don't ask who your father was or what you own

It only asks if you can close off every hole that's open —

And I say no — we bleed together, this is home —

Every crack stays sealed so the water keeps on flowing

Chorus

I am the pipe that holds it all — not a king nor prince —

I'm the hand under every roof before the wind comes in —

Bloodlines run through the sewer — bloodlines don't have names —

This is the city's pulse — I keep it warm beneath the frames

Bridge

Every house you see above us — built off what we gave —

The money moves the water but the hands that fix it never got the wave

Don't ask me for a name to put beside this wall —

Ask me how deep my shovel goes before the winter's fall —

This city's bloodline runs through every drain that's dug —

Through every kid who learned to seal the holes when they were young —

Outro