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the Music
[Verse 1]
Hey there, midnight circus—step right through the pane,
Watch me juggle pocket-watches, never drop a chain.
Got a wallet full of echoes, but the hours overflow;
I’m rich in ticking thunder, poor in solid gold.
[Chorus]
We’re spending daylight like it’s spare guitar strings,
Broke as busted amps, but the clock still sings.
Let the minutes rain down, silver and free—
Plenty of time, no dime, still rolling in key.
[Verse 2]
Old bar-stool prophets preach “Son, cash is king,”
But I trade their copper sermons for a vinyl needle’s sting.
Strike a match on empty pockets, spark a sunset riff—
Ride the riff till sunrise, living off the shift.
[Chorus]
We’re spending daylight like it’s spare guitar strings,
Broke as busted amps, but the clock still sings.
Let the minutes rain down, silver and free—
Plenty of time, no dime, still rolling in key.
[Verse 3]
Junkyard moons keep turning, chrome against the dusk;
We’re grease-stained dream mechanics, tuning fate on trust.
Pocket change keeps silent, but the rhythm never lies—
We cash in on the echo while the stardust amplifies.
[Chorus]
We’re spending daylight like it’s spare guitar strings,
Broke as busted amps, but the clock still sings.
Let the minutes rain down, silver and free—
Plenty of time, no dime, still rolling in key.
the Story
The year was ’74-and-a-half, that liminal summer wedged between yesterday’s flower-power and tomorrow’s neon-chrome. A steam-breathing dusk drifted across the city like purple corduroy, and Riff Cassidy—guitar hustler, time collector, broke philosopher—stepped out of the pawnshop with nothing but a busted pocket-watch and a head full of cosmic echo.
The watch had no hands, only a cracked crystal face swirling with opal dust. Legend said it held spare seconds—or maybe the seconds held it; no one remembered. Riff flipped it open, half expecting a bill collector to crawl out. Instead, the gears hummed a low G-minor drone that vibrated up his wrist and into the avenue. Every streetlamp flickered in sync, like a row of stoic metronomes nodding to an invisible groove.
He struck a match on the sidewalk—couldn’t afford cigarettes, so he lit his imagination instead. The flame ballooned into a tangerine lotus, petals curling back to reveal a tiny stage suspended in mid-air. On that stage, a trio of bar-stool prophets—leather vests, silver-lamé bell-bottoms—pounded out a riff that smelled like burnt maple syrup and motor oil. Their amps wore stickers: “CASH IS A MYTH” and “TIME: ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES.”
“Dig it, brother,” crooned the singer, microphone shaped like an hourglass. “You can’t buy sunrise—but you can jam till it shows.”
The music tunneled through Riff’s skull, rewiring every unpaid bill into a spectrogram of color. Quarters, nickels, dimes—imaginary coins—poured from the pocket-watch and bounced down the gutter in syncopated clinks. Each coin sprouted wings, became a mercury-silver moth, and fluttered into the sodium glow above, leaving chrome trails that spelled B-R-E-A-K in the smog.
Riff followed those trails, shoes slapping puddles that reflected the cosmos. Alley walls stretched into mural panoramas: junkyard moons rotating on rusty axles, chrome tumbleweeds tumbling through transistor deserts, jukebox cacti humming “Stairway to Everywhere.” Somewhere a pay-phone rang collect; the city refused the charges.
He emerged in a long-abandoned carnival lot, Ferris wheel skeletal against a grape-punch sky. On the midway lay a mountain of snapped guitar strings, glinting like metal spider silk. He picked one up—E-string, sweat-stained, perfect. With no guitar in sight, he strummed the air; the string turned into a laser of turquoise sound, slicing reality open like warm taffy. Through the slit he glimpsed seconds spilling over spare change: minutes tumbling in zero-G, pennies orbiting like copper moons, and in the center a radiant jukebox jutting from cracked asphalt.
He stepped through.
Inside was a lounge stitched together from velvet dreams: crushed-plum sofas, lava-lamp chandeliers, and a bartender made of analog static. Patrons huddled around tables of melted vinyl, sipping date-stamped daylight from shot glasses.
“I’ll buy a round,” Riff announced, patting empty jeans. The crowd laughed, warm and ragged. Currency here was rhythm, and he was flush. He tapped the pocket-watch on the bar: clack-clack-clack—then opened its hollow face. Seconds flew out like silver confetti, orbiting the chandelier, refracting kaleidoscope oranges and aquas onto ceiling clouds.
The jukebox whirred, needle dropping into some forgotten groove. Out spilled his song—three chords and a debt deadline—but the debt dissolved in the downbeat. Basslines walked across the carpet; cymbals shimmered into mirrored doorways. Couples slow-danced on the ceiling; their pockets emptied IOUs that turned into fireflies spelling R-O-L-L O-N.
Riff bent the E-string again; solo blossoms opened in every ear. Time elongated, syrupy, until the concept of “four-minute track” felt quaint as a telegram. When the final chord rang, it didn’t decay; it folded inward, becoming a heartbeat that pulsed with the street’s electrical grid. Lights dimmed. The pocket-watch, spent, snapped shut and dissolved into dust.
“Bar’s closed,” murmured the static bartender, flicking off neon sighs.
Riff drifted back through the taffy slit, onto the carnival lot now hushed and golden. Dawn yawned over the skyline—pink chrome, gentle fuzz. He was still broke, but the sun clocked in on his payroll, showering him with comp-time rays. He hummed the chorus—“Plenty of time, no dime, still rolling in key”—and someone, somewhere, answered on slide guitar.
He flicked an imaginary lighter, watched its flame spiral into a fractal sunrise, and walked on. Seconds over spare change—the richest currency a troubadour could carry.
