Green-Stained Spotlight

You hit the front and the crowd loses its mind like someone flipped a breaker in their chests and wired them straight to your grin
Phones up, hands up
voices cracking your lyrics back at you while I stand in the dark
arms crossed, chewing on my own skin
I taught you half those chords
sat on stained carpets while you butchered sets and swore you would never get tight
Now you glide through perfect sets while I clap from the back like some failed ghost who never learned to fight.

You tell interviews about struggle
about grinding through the cold and hunger and late nights that chewed your soul and spit out steel
I watch from a flickering screen, counting the lies
counting the pieces I recognize that never make your highlight reel
Every story you polish has my fingerprints under the lacquer
my busted fingers on the first rough draft of that hook
You stand there in expensive boots

all teeth and swagger
while I sit with the original version in a lost notebook.
I am not proud of this acid in my chest
Watching you shine while my pulse grinds flat, Still
when they chant your label
I taste blood and grit and all that.

Green-stained spotlight
every beam that hits your face burns my eyes
Crowd roars like a nuclear blast for you while my throat stays dry
If envy is a sin, carve it on my wrist in your font
I want your front, your sound, your wreckage
All the shit you flaunt.

You drag me out back after gigs, slap my shoulder
say you could not have done it without my grind and my faith
Same breath
you walk past three kids who only know you as some flawless lie that fell from the speakers fully formed
I smile for your selfies, hold your jacket
play the good soldier while thunder rolls for you alone
Then walk home in used shoes

humming riffs that should have been mine through cracked bone.
If I stepped in front of you mid-set and told them whose chords they bleed
Half of them would boo, half would laugh
None would ever concede, You won the story
not just the front, You locked it up in printed ink
My part lives in ash and anger
Buried deeper every drink.

One day that light will tilt
drift off your jaw and find another stray
Until that night, I stand in shadow
Counting every cheer You stole from my decay.