This Is Lukas Nelson and Promise of the Real

Real Time

Long Time Gone

A character song from my upcoming dystopian novel: THE POSITIVITY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX. Check out the album for more character songs.

____

Riding subway, going underground
Back and forward, no meaning I have found
Yes, I’ve memorized my last station
On flat ground, below oblivion

Every time I bought dollar ticket fare
I see planes fly in a world that’s fair
I know, be positive and keep sight forward
Cause’ traffic don’t stop just cause’ you’re tortured

[Chorus]
Labor expense at cell D4,
That’s me after and also before,
Flat résumé with age ticking, ticking up,
Waiting for grave, for me to start digging up

I stopped complaining cause’ I’m sick,
Cause’ speaking up just cause some manic,
Them meat heads say, I’m just cuck,
College grads say, so problematic

It’s super sick structural tick,
Ideal, ideas, cultural trick,
But I know down, down, down at the base
Them all shaped by cold economic phase

[Chorus]

Can’t blame all for wanting happiness
Especially when happiness needs sure wealthiness
True love is for folks with ten properties
Who grow money, not harvest them near free

[Chorus]

Cell D4

Never be someone back up plan, never settle.

At Least Not Yet

We know this one may provoke strong reactions, and that’s exactly why we’d love to hear yours. Does it resonate, frustrate, challenge, or unsettle you? Please leave a comment and share your thoughts - conversation is part of what this song is here to start.

This song is born out of that familiar, gut-twisting feeling of absorbing too much bad news - when statistics lose their meaning, empathy gets overwhelmed, and the human cost becomes impossible to process. It wrestles openly with contradiction: compassion alongside cruelty, love for animals beside violence toward them, the desire to be good in a world that often rewards indifference. Angry, uneasy, and uncomfortably self-aware, this track doesn’t offer easy answers - it holds up a mirror and asks us to sit with what we see.

Lately,
.....hearing the news
..........makes me feel like
I'm chewing a wasp.
I try to calculate
.....the human cost,
..........how many lives have been lost.
But the non-stop numbers
go beyond all human understanding.
I find I'm landing on
.....impossible squares.
There seems to be nowhere
.....on this cruel planet
where there isn't a human gannet
being rude, stealing your food.
The wars of survival
.....are relentless.
And I'm trying to be good.
I'm trying to be a good person.
But it seems I make matters worse.
I get cursed when I protest
.....about the bad things we do.
Nobody wants to be reminded
.....how horribly unkind they are.

*

They love cats.
.....They love dogs.
..........They love eating cows,
love spit-roasting hogs.
The contradictions
.....make fictions of their loves.
.....Our horses
are seldom made main courses.
Most of us are hawks.
We could never ever be doves.
We cover things up.
We bury the inconvenient facts.

*

Lately,
.....hearing the news
..........makes me feel like
I'm chewing a wasp.
I try to calculate
.....the human cost,
..........how many lives have been lost.
But the non-stop numbers
go beyond all human understanding.
I find I'm landing on
.....impossible squares.
There seems to be nowhere
.....on this cruel planet
where there isn't a human gannet
being rude, stealing your food.
The wars of survival
.....are relentless.
And I'm trying to be good.
I'm trying to be a good person.
But it seems I make matters worse.
I get cursed when I protest
.....about the bad things we do.
Nobody wants to be reminded
.....how horribly unkind they are.

*

They love cats.
.....They love dogs.
..........They love eating cows,
love spit-roasting hogs.
The contradictions
.....make fictions of their loves.
.....Our horses
are seldom made main courses.
Most of us are hawks.
We could never ever be doves.
We cover things up.
We bury the inconvenient facts.

*

Most of us are hawks.
We could never ever be doves.
We cover things up.
We bury the inconvenient facts.

It's a fat fact.
.....It's a factual fact.
..........It's a fat factual fact.

Most of us are hawks.
We could never ever be doves.
We cover things up.
We bury the inconvenient facts.

Bad Case

Lukas Nelson And Promise Of The Real

Related tracks