About the song
A pencil traces public money from a leaking school to a banquet plate and back to where it started — incompetence or corruption, the damage lands the same.
Show me one door slamming shut / Show me one dirty dollar finally coming home
About these notes
AI-assisted song notes, based on the sources shown here. Not yet human-reviewed.
Words from the artist’s archive
A Straight Line or a Circle lyrics
Artist-supplied lyric sheet, matched by title. The sheet may differ from this released performance. Production notes and alternate promotional cuts are omitted.
Read the lyric sheet
Verse 1
Kitchen table, 2:17 a.m., pencil digging grooves in the wood I drag the river from the hearing, same damn loop they always do Past a school with buckets catching ceiling rain that never stops Through a shell company with no door, no names, no clock Around a banquet plate where the donor’s check still wet Pencil finds the starting point every time the circle hits Same blood, same ink, same quiet theft
Chorus
A straight line or a circle Slow can take a lifetime but it leaves a scar you feel Show me one door slamming shut Show me one dirty dollar finally coming home Show me cases stacking like bodies on the road If the arrows keep spinning back to speeches under gold A straight line or a circle, that’s how the people know
Verse 2
First answer says they missed it while the numbers screamed the wall If you can’t read a ledger why the hell you hold the call? Second one sees the hidden pipe, knows exactly who gets paid Public money sliding cross a dinner in a pressed campaign sleeve A fool loses a fortune with his hand still on the wheel A careful mind just reroutes the loss till every signature looks clean Either way the clinic’s dark another day Either way the family at the window still has to pay
Chorus
A straight line or a circle Slow can take a lifetime but it leaves a scar you feel Show me one door slamming shut Show me one dirty dollar finally coming home Show me cases stacking like bodies on the road If the arrows keep spinning back to speeches under gold A straight line or a circle, that’s how the people know
Verse 3
Third one knows the names and studies both their shoes Close the pipe means crossing friends and watching your own check bounce So courage gets a press release while the valve stays wide Fourth one needs the leak alive because the leak buys votes A wound fills a mailbox, a villain packs a room A real cure kills the enemy that keeps the campaign fueled One is scared of the fire that comes with doing right One keeps selling smoke because pointing pays the light
Bridge
I know the case is heavy and the proof is slow to lift County lines get twisted, witnesses get quiet or they drift A quiet honest office might claw back what it can No camera at the courthouse, no headline for its hands Fair enough, but honest work still leaves a number and a scar One charge, one door that finally locks, one dollar traveling home Slow moves by inches but the inches share the same damn road A circle just changes subjects when accountability gets close
Chorus
A straight line or a circle Slow can take a lifetime but it leaves a scar you feel Show me one door slamming shut Show me one dirty dollar finally coming home Show me cases stacking like bodies on the road If the arrows keep spinning back to speeches under gold A straight line or a circle, that’s how the people know
Outro
A straight line or a circle… Show me one door… Show me one dollar…
Inside the recording
Kitchen table, 2:17 a.m., pencil digging grooves in the wood I drag the river from the hearing, same damn loop they always do
A straight line or a circle Slow can take a lifetime but it leaves a scar you feel
A straight line or a circle… Show me one door…
Excerpts from artist-supplied lyric files matched by title. Lyric sheets may differ from the released performance.