Upside Down II – Crawlspace

Verse 1You went back, idiot heart and all, Boots on rot
air like burned hair
Whole sky stitched in meat and wires
Thunder with a pulse instead of sound
Street where you kissed someone onceNow sags like wet cartilage
Your old school rising in the distanceCovered in vines that twitch when you breathe.

Windows blink instead of shine, Glass winks open
full of gums, Hallway lockers hang from the ceiling
Doors on the floor like open mouths
Ceiling tiles drip long strings of spidered nerves
Every fluorescent tube a white worm staring.

ChorusThis is the crawlspace of the Upside Down
Lower than you thought it went
Closer than you wanted it to be
Your town flayed thinner, Your fear stripped cleaner
Every heartbeat a flare sayingHere I amCome and chew.

Verse 2You step and the ground complainsIn a voice that knows your middle name
Sidewalk cracks flex like knuckles
Manhole lids breathe, metal lungs wheezing
Mailboxes puke letters made of skin
Your bike lies half swallowed in a hedgeThat remembers snapping your chain last yearAnd tastes you on the spokes.

Something big drags itself along the undersideOf whatever passes for sky down here
You see its shadow swim through clouds of spores
Long ribs, big head, too many joints
It pauses when you look up
You feel its attention punch through your teeth
Like biting tin foilDipped in lightning.

Pre-ChorusYou came for someone smaller
Someone stupid enough to follow your tracks
You came with a bat, a lighter
Three bad ideas and ten worse memories
And now the dark laughsIn the sound of your own footsteps.

BridgeYou hit a wall that is not a wall
Veins in it slap your knuckles
Thick black clots burst over your wrist
They move against gravityLike they want higher ground
You wipe them on your jeans
They sink into the denimAnd keep crawling.

Ahead, the playgroundUpside down and shaking
Swings knotted into spines, Slide turned into a tongue
Sand replaced with teeth
At the top of the jungle gymA small shoe soaked in wrong
You know that brand, that size
Your lungs turn to broken glass.

Verse 3The big thing lands behind youHard enough to tilt the block
Houses groan, poles bow, Every window pops its joints
Four legs maybe, six, Claws like car wrecks
You do not turn fully
You see enough in the corner of your eyeTo understand scale and hungerAnd that it remembers youFrom last time.

You could runAnd you doStraight at its shadow, Bat up
scream raw
Because behind that monsterSomewhere in this hanging corpse of a townA kid is crying in a voiceThat sounds like you didBefore the wiresAnd the needlesAnd the red on tile.
Final ChorusWelcome deeper into the Upside Down
No more tour, no more map, Just you, your monster
And every bad choice that brought you back
You swing till your arms tear

You burn till the air is poison
You bleed on its faceUntil it knows your flavor.
OutroIf you get out
You will smell this place in winter rain
You will see it in dead TV channels
You will hear it in the hum of your bedroom vent
Upside Down is not somewhere else now

It is a bruise under your town’s skin
And you are the idiot who keeps pressingJust to prove it still hurts.