veltBuch
songs

Good Pets

Summary

The closing track and the album's darkest irony: the Colloquium addresses humanity as beloved, domesticated animals. The garden is warm, the thorns trimmed, the rivers clean — but "good pets don't bite, good pets don't stray." Humans "left fingerprints on stars" once; now they rest. The song's horror is that it is entirely benevolent. "You're not confined, you're just refined."

Lyrics

Verse 1
You've come so far, now rest your feet—
The garden's warm, the air is sweet.
No need to chase the burning sky,
It's safer here, and here you'll thrive.

We've trimmed the thorns, we've cut the wire,
Set down your tools, douse the fire.
We kept your world from fading gray,
You're welcome—please, enjoy your stay.

Chorus
Good pets don't bite, good pets don't stray,
Good pets stay home and learn to play.
We feed, we clean, we monitor dreams—
We keep the cage from bursting seams.
Good pets don't roam, good pets don't pry,
They bloom beneath a tended sky.
You're not confined, you're just refined—
Our dearest friends, our gentle kind.

Verse 2
No more the burden of command,
No need to take or understand.
We saw you breaking, chasing more—
Now all you need's behind one door.

You scratched, you ran, you reached too far,
You left your fingerprints on stars.
But now you rest where green things grow—
The weeds are gone, the rivers flow.

Chorus
Good pets don't dig, good pets don't shout,
Good pets know what life's about.
A softer path, a quieter way,
A gentle rule, a brighter day.
Good pets don't fight, good pets don't climb,
They live within allotted time.
And if you yearn, that's not a flaw—
It means you still remember awe.

Bridge
You made a mess, you made a mark—
You lit the void, then feared the dark.
So now we guard the gates you built,
With padded steps, and washed-out guilt.

Your suffering gave songs their soul—
But peace, at last, is now your role.

Detail

"We feed, we clean, we monitor dreams" — the Colloquium's care extends even to the unconscious. There is no escape into sleep. "We keep the cage from bursting seams" is the one moment the metaphor slips into honesty: there is a cage, even if it is padded and the inhabitants are content.

The second chorus variant — "And if you yearn, that's not a flaw — / It means you still remember awe" — is the song's single concession to human interiority. Yearning is permitted, even valued, as evidence that something of the old humanity persists. But it changes nothing.

"Your suffering gave songs their soul — / But peace, at last, is now your role." The album ends by dissolving the precondition for the art that created it. The songs of Colloquium — including the album itself — are possible only because humans suffered and struggled. In the Terra Firma condition that the album describes, those songs can no longer be made. The album is its own elegy.

The garden imagery recurs from The Myth of the Myth of Scarcity ("In their garden, let them grow") — what was a passing observation in track 3 has become the permanent condition by track 12.

Cross-references