White Noise Cathedral

They tiled the meadows with plastic and gloss, a shiny afternoon, Billboards preach the new commandments, smiling mouths that never leave the room. Cathedrals turned to shopping malls, windows breathe a curated light, We fold our faces into glass and call the hollow things our right. There’s static in the pews where the old hymns used to grow, We trade a whispered legend for a feed that’s set to blow. In the white noise cathedral, the organ’s just a relict, We light our little candles, silent prayers lost in time. The statues lean on ledgers, bells not for free anymore, Watch the skyline slowly fade away — we’re learning how to fail. Pale kings in suits with trembling thumbs, signing futures into debt, History’s a fast-track slideshow with the colour washed to threat. Mothers teach their children how to wipe the saints away, A museum for the weather, fossilized in yesterday. We wallpaper our minds with a thousand polythene lies, Underneath the plastic, the river remembers how to cry. In the white noise cathedral, the choir is out of tune, We sing along to the adverts while the gardens rot in June. The pulpits read the contracts and the backs of hearts are sold, Our curiosities are bargains and our stories are on hold. Listen — the satellites are holy, they orbit like false suns, Our voices get compressed and lost among the planets on the run. There’s a child on the corner reading maps with trembling light, She folds them into paper birds and lets them learn to flight. Take the coins from the fountains, take the paint from the flags, Measure out the silence, count the people in the glass. We called it civilization, we called it something fine — Now the sidewalks hold the memories of the last electric shrine. In the white noise cathedral, there’s a hush before the fall, We’re learning how to listen for a language past the call. Maybe bells will ring again when someone learns to want, Or maybe we’ll be screaming while the lights all count and haunt So put your palm against the plaster, feel the thrum beneath the stone, There’s a pulse that’s not a profit, a softness not a loan. If we fold up every headline, if we take down every screen, Maybe in the quiet that remains, we’ll remember what it means - cathedral Track from the album "Canary In The Coalmine"