Incorporated

Not holy Not clean Not equal in the rain But once a hand could meet a hand And a door still meant away There was a stall There was a workshop There was weather in the trade A face across a table And a price that could be weighed No saint in the bargain No justice in the grain But consequence had fingerprints And loss could learn a name Then the name grew larger Than the hands that signed it in The field was called open But the gates had learned to lean Paper learned to shelter What a body had to feel And the law held up the mirror And called the wound a deal This is where the bargain bent This is where the free door closed One hand came to answer One came armoured in a legal robe The monster had a charter The hunger had a name The field was called open With a wall on every side This is where the bargain bent This is where the old words lied The wage book knew the rent book The rent book knew the store And every road to elsewhere Led back through the company door You could leave in theory With your children and your debt To the next gate wearing the same face As the first one made you regret The bell rang in the morning The soot wrote on the lung A man stood at the counter And the counter spoke as one Exit was a word they used For doors they owned by name Freedom was the notice Pinned above the chain A person facing paper With a thousand hidden hands A life reduced to signing What the machine demands This is where the bargain bent This is where the free door closed One hand came to answer One came armoured in a legal robe The monster had a charter The hunger had a name The field was called open With a wall on every side This is where the bargain bent This is where the old words lied They did not hate the market For the apple and the bread They hated what the market meant When the market had a head A head that did not hunger A body made of law A thousand private appetites Behind a single jaw So do not ask why fire looked clean From underneath the smoke When the hand that held the contract Never wore the yoke This is where the bargain bent This is where the wound began Not in trade between neighbours But a person facing paper With a thousand hidden hands The monster had a charter The hunger had a name And every legal mouthpiece Kept speaking freedom’s name And from the smoke a dream began No rich No poor No chain No more legal monsters Wearing freedom’s name The wound was real The bargain bent The dream came after that