I’ve been threaded through the sinew of this city’s daily rot,
Lacing silk behind every institution, every scheme and plot.
I don’t require your faith or acknowledgment to thrive—
I subsist on the momentum of each system kept alive.
I am the web beneath the ones who think they lead,
The silent hypothesis that fuels their rhetoric and greed.
Pull a thread and watch the whole machinery come apart at the seam—
I am not the nightmare; I am the engine of the dream.
I’ve laced the conversation and I’ve threaded through the bill,
My angles run under every lobby, every deal,
And the hand that signs the legislation doesn’t know it signs for me—
I’ve been operating in the margins of democracy.
I live inside the interval between what’s said and done,
Between the public statement and the back room where it’s won.
I am the gap between the promise and the audit of the cost—
Every contract fully honored is a battle that I lost.
So build your walls and vote your ballots and believe the evening feed,
I will be in the weight of consequence before you plant the seed.
The spider doesn’t need acknowledgment to hold the web in place—
I was in the room before you entered, I’ll be here when you vacate.