"Merit" lyrics - AESOP ROCK

Alright, I can hear the ocean in a shell
But for the life of me I've never heard your surges more than raindrops in a well
Paladin tribe, break beat elitists, element five
Fully sold on operation, jeopardize of my survival
Will survive when sprayed by heaven's liquid ammunition
I'll survive when betrayed by my brethren's wicked ambitions
I'll survive when braided with shut eye; sticky thickets and thorns, born clutching a fistful
The hurt's morbidly blissful
Forms spiraling, sovereigns bring the rise in the funnel
A chorus line of blind crazes tap the water, find the tunnel (Find the tunnel)
As skinny click, mechanics flock to block pick of the land
We stretch the Earth around the canvas, drag a stick in the sand
And pan the hell out, timid, you're tireless, bold
The cold that ire spits clicks subtly on supremacy, therefore blemishe me
Oh, the treacherous penalty centers me, renders me bait
Skating slalom through this churning murder columns
I am not entirely trained to undo the shame
And all I got's three pennies and a rusty mic unto my name
Unto my game, defy the Siamese approaches
Whose delinquent dichotomy comps Emerald City in wondrous novelty
Drink drum, sip a snare to spit a rigid sequence, that's when freak sons
Fade to black just like these pretty pink lungs, slugger
Paper dolls' facade as swashbuckler (Yeah)
Bounty hunt the front to document the frosh cluster
I am structure with a smoke ring, militant distinction
With a cloak-and-dagger stagger prime directive
And all else burrows itself amongst drunken perspective, fade me
I flee the scene grippin' the missing link like chain gang escapees

[Chorus 1:]
Build me, kill me
We cadets hold determination as property, undeniably divine
We leak passion for the noise
There is not a track to cherish from he who lacks merit

And all I think about's the motion, exerted to color mavericks alerted
Herd a billion nervous lost child prodigies home to flourish (Yeah)
Now taciturn facets burn open to yield malarkey
Navigator when wrestled on fancy driftwood out the vessel
And I settle a conquest, stamp it, label it fresh (Fresh)
I in turn apply policies which require intrinsic merit (Uh)
Try to wallow down these yellow bricks with yesterday's appendix on hold
Spot it like sky horizon, posed as barcodes
Load your fantasy, interject a bad dream candidly
Blue in the face, through in the chase between myself and fame's embrace
Face engaging presence resonant with chiaroscuro atmospheric traps
Inhabit the land of denied clearance (Yeah)
Pigeonholed styles, drop similar, the course, the corpse patients
Lacing non sequiturs that spittle off the chin (Spittle off the chin)
Upon the recognition pilot soften up the grin
Spinning me dizzy, cold, bending my city to hold water
Yeah, we got affiliates, cadet merit and brilliance
Cleric apparel king-thing, crooked, I shrink, I sink into my book
It's like fury blew the scaffolding askew and tainted curiosities
Allow the freak show to continue
Forty thieves received the cue, commence blending a planet
Decorate the dusk like henna to hand
We unknowingly sketched the pentagram by sending clans of caffeinated couriers
Upon a quest to run the perfect circle 'round a star
Bizarre pattern with a bad vibe like Jafar to Aladdin
Pardon the carbon-based blaze amongst the stagnant trend frenzy
It offends me; wait, ain't it the Liquid Soul therapy?
I sip to grip a stationary pillar, yet
We slipped these boogie nights, sucked wattage from rookie lights, now you proud
I'ma be there when you rush in just to touch the mushroom cloud
Drink failure, Lord have mercy on their dreams
Pretty pixels tend to trickle off the screen (Know what I mean?)

[Chorus 2:]
Build me, kill me
We consider fresh sound play to sink frighteningly close to extinct
My life line is an assignment to
Feed the arts my spirit and bleed, merit

The conclusion is subtle
Huddled amongst hermetic gutter-bugs, peasants, and drunks
Junkies to critics, sick dictators, haters, kings to alley urchins, monarchs, narcs to liars
Circling the wild fires, live wires
I tend to blend an action less than orderly in
With an otherwise uncommonly primer to normalcy torn
These traits fade as cadavers due to conflicting data matter
First heard as remarkable's now labeled as unmarketable
Damn, thorn in my side
Now the high five hives despised from freeing demating alien seedlings, retreating
Burst the threshold, make the vessel capsize
Then the hollerings of buoyant survivors treading awoke dreaded leviathan
Deaded, headed to crunch the world of MC etiquette
By dismantling mics prior to passing towards degenerates
How you like that settlement? You feel that?
A maverick like myself bottles, will quit 'til the cocoon naturally peels back
This little light of mine shines at a hundred billion times
The magnitude of every star, within an ample sky sample
I alerted my sole crusaders to trade the games
Prescribed them strict diets of DDT and Kelthane
It fester when ingested, glorious vellum
Addressing helots to zealots, to Jezebel's to hellish felons
Granted my span of attention is not what it used to be
But most of y'all delinquents ain't amusing me no more, kid, merit