[Intro]
(tape counter clicks, channel static)
Good evening. Bird Facts as a Service.
Bureau of Avian Affairs, Circular fifty-five.
The following diagram was pulled at the reading room.
Box forty-one, folder three. Research card still warm.
Follow the arrows. Do not touch the arrows.
Coo-bop.

[Verse 1]
Before the sun gets up on Arlington Boulevard,
before the service road remembers anybody's name,
there's a truck at the apex of the drawing —
squatting at the top of the frame.
It is the origin. It is the drain.
Hopper up, hopper down, that's the stroke it signs.
A crow on the fender with a marker in its beak
black-bars the running order, one line at a time.

[Chorus]
Stage one — the truck! (Coo-bop, coo-bop)
Stage two — the wage! (Coo-bop, coo-bop)
Stage three — the ledger! (Coo-bop, coo-bop)
Stage four — the curb! (Coo-bop, coo-bop)
Stage five — the truck again! (Coo-bop)
Coo-bop back to one — we begin again.

[Verse 2]
Payday posts, and it never says how much —
it's a vector, not a total, it's a heading, not a touch.
The worker walks the sidewalk that the truck rolled this morning,
same awnings, same fluorescent hum,
and the wage goes shopping where the wage came from,
and the register is a node and the node is a bell,
and the purchases stack up like a ledger in a cell,
crow comes through with the marker — black bar, black bar —
you can read the total, you cannot read the parts.

[Chorus]
Stage one — the truck! (Coo-bop, coo-bop)
Stage two — the wage! (Coo-bop, coo-bop)
Stage three — the ledger! (Coo-bop, coo-bop)
Stage four — the curb! (Coo-bop, coo-bop)
Stage five — the truck again! (Coo-bop)
Coo-bop back to one — we begin again.

[Bridge]
Pull slip. Orientation. Chair. Card.
Box forty-one. Folder three. The finding aid is fair.
Nothing in this building is served still-classified —
those black bars live out at College Park, and so do I.
So I read the loop in daylight, in a public research room,
and I chart it for the pigeons with a flow chart and a broom,
five arrows, five numbers, one truck at the crest,
a pigeon on the fifth arrow's tail — not done yet, not yet.

[Verse 3]
The husk hits the curb on a Tuesday-colored gray,
the bag by the dumpster takes the long way, the long way —
past the pad where the RadioShack sign used to glow,
six-one-nine-eight, Arlington Boulevard, lot's still there though.
The loop crosses that parking lot twice in a single turn,
once as a wage and once as a thing that will not burn.
And the truck is at the top, and the truck is at the drain,
and the arrow bends back to the top of the frame.

[Chorus]
Stage one — the truck! (Coo-bop, coo-bop)
Stage two — the wage! (Coo-bop, coo-bop)
Stage three — the ledger! (Coo-bop, coo-bop)
Stage four — the curb! (Coo-bop, coo-bop)
Stage five — the truck again! (Coo-bop)
Coo-bop back to one — we begin again.

[Outro]
Stage five — the truck again. (Coo-bop.)
Stage five — the truck again. (Coo-bop.)
We are not closing the fifth arrow.
The fifth arrow closes itself.
Turn the tape over. Coo-bop, forever. Coo-bop, forever.