Shane Koyczan - Juggernaut lyrics

"You would say: "Be still, be still my boy"

Never son, because I wasn’t just some boy
From a different dad
Seems like our only thing in common was
Our need for therapy
But we never went we just
Spent quiet time together, as
If silence was expensive
But we were both filthy rich a
Question like "do you love
Me?" was an itch our doctors
Told us not to scratch

So we just prayed someone would catch it
While rubbing us down after walking around
With the weight of each
Other’s world on our shoulders we
Had hearts like boulders
We played Sisyphus trying to
Push the other’s uphill, but


We told our hearts: "Be still let no one
Move you, let no one lift you
Let no one get
Through that stone wall you call skin
Let no one in, because people are clumsy
And they’ll break you
Take you apart in the study"

You tell the world that they knew you
As if knowing was enough to make them
The most foremost expert on you they’ll
Claim that everything you did or didn’t do
Was just another complexity solved as
Simply as a grade 2 problem as if by age
7 my only problem was math as if
I was never 7 and more dedicated to figure
Out which path was quickest to the bathroom
So the bullies wouldn’t have the
Satisfaction of seeing me bleed
On my clothes and God knows you’d be there!

And so everywhere, like a nightmare
I couldn’t stop having
I’d wake up shaking with you there making it
Worth saying: "Be still
Be still my boy" Never
Son, just someone who it seems you’re liking
Just someone who it seems you
Never tried to know

So somehow without moving we’d
Go through motions
To deserts daydreaming about a time when
We were oceans, we were still trying
To make our tides come in
As if we had been throwing messages in
Bottles into each other and our refusal
To actually write those messages was just
Another way to say – nothing
We’d bring stillness home like a strayed
Dog and teach it to
Play dead tongues like leeches, we’d
Bled our voices dry
While a playing dead dog would try to
Teach us tricks like "Speak!" But
We sat silent like two blind
Students trying to sneak
A peek at their grade 6 teacher getting
Dressed, but we never knew
What direction to look
So the kids next to us always whispered
"eyes on your own test" And I hated you all
The way up until the day you finally spoke

You said: "There will come a time when the
World will look at you without concern
Because you’ve always been still they will
Look past you you will
Be as unregarded as the scenery that people
Take for granted you’ll be ruled
In the perceptions of you that they
Have planted in their mind
But all the while you will grow
And after all the years you
Spent trying to know stillness the
Whole world will turn their
Heads unable to miss the moment when
You decided to move and
There will come a time when
You must move move
With the full force you would
Find behind the eyes of
Someone who could’ve spent their life
Satisfying a million desires
But instead decided to conquer just one move
Like a legion of natural disasters towards
The monuments they have built in an attempt
To declare greatness they have never
Earned move as swiftly as the knowledge
Learned by the students of
Practice move so they cannot dismiss
Youlike sunlight through stained glass
Not around but through each mass
They would raise against you
Move because being still
Is something they can never make
You do move my boy, because I love you"

And I thought ‘Awesome! You totally taught me
How to be stubborn that’s great’

But now that you’re gone, now
That quality has turned trait
I find myself caught up in
An endless debate ‘where’ vs ‘when’ as if I
Am waiting for then to become now
So that the answers to ‘why’
Resemble reasons like ‘somehow’
As if ‘somehow’ was enough to encompass the
Rough estimate I make when
I decide what direction
To take for the moment I break stillness
This heart is a juggernaut one that you took
The time to shape against all those who
Would hold up red tape in the path of
The life I chose to live through

This is much more than my meager declaration
Of love this is my Thank You
And this is for
A man who knew me well enough to know that
Should I ever choose to go through struggle
I can set my sails like
A ship breaking through
The neck of a whisky bottle school was a
Boxing ring and the man in
My corner made sure
Not to bring a towel to throw in

I’ve been studying stillness
Watched my mother fight and lose
To an illness that forced
It'self upon her, as if it were the
Man she met after my father
The same man who couldn’t
Bother to stick around
After the diagnosis i have known stillness

This is for my granddad, who had the good
Sense to take me to that man’s house, so
I could ask him, why he did what he
Did, why? I will accept your apology
But, you better make me belief that you’re
Sorry so go ahead – move me"