The sunset creeps down into the night
The rusted beast slowly roars to life
Cookie cutter streets from the birds eye
Mutter dusty creaks of a long decline
No one cares to hear
The opinions
Of the gears
Of pinions
Though they drive the wheel
So the machine clangs on ever despised
Cylinders bang off into the sky
Raining it's pollution on the population
An asbestos linked to cancer of aspirations
And the chemo is to kneel

Join all the people, be a good little cog
Behind white steeples are the black clouds of our smog

So feed the coal into the engine
Let the soul underneath it's skin
The mechanism leaps and starts to shutter
The heart beats, the eyelids flutter
As electricity strikes the coil
You'll be the next to breathe in the spoils
Of a steampunk, heretic machine
Just scrap and junk in the American dream

My, how green was the valley I used to dwell
Now choked on debris, a contaminated shell
A lonely leaf, pushed on by the breeze
Ground in the teeth of this incessant machine
No one dares
To raise a hand
All to scared
To break the shaft
And bring it all to a screeching halt
So it produces more toxins into the air
As it loosens the conscience for the despair
That we'll work to the bone and give it all trying to save
Let ourselves be robbed of the cradle and forced into the grave
In our blueprints there's a fault

Back in line, you just traded a number for a name
Content that's fine, you go back to fanning the flame

So feed the coal into the engine
Let the soul underneath it's skin
The mechanism leaps and starts to shutter
The heart beats, the eyelids flutter
As electricity strikes the coil
You'll be the next to breathe in the spoils
Of a steampunk, heretic machine
Just gears and junk in the American dream

My lungs oxidize
As I breathe in your sulfur
From the inside
Red rust flows like an ulcer
As the fire of this machine
Burns on into the night
Etching a depressing scene
Of dusk across the sky
A post-apocalyptic
Not so cryptic
Vision of the life and death
Of a botched by design
Once top of the line
Factory of labored breath
Designed for so much more than this
But only seen through the eyes of an alchemist