Underbrands

Unseen, yet bought.

There’s a moon over Bourbon street tonight
I see faces as they pass beneath the pale lamplight
I’ve no choice but to follow that call
The bright lights the people and the moon and all

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I am an Underbrand.
No one sees me, everyone knows me.

I live in the shadows, my profile a blade of light. I move within the gaps, among the details, the breaches are my home. My power is great, and they know it. They must govern me, manage it to keep me from unleashing it to their detriment.

But I don’t think about my power; it doesn’t interest me. I watch people: I study them in silence. I listen, I learn, and I create. And when I spring forward, everyone follows.

I pray everyday to be strong
For I know what I do must be wrong

I am an Underbrand. A brand that lives inside other brands. I bring value, allure. People want me even if they don’t see me. My Brand-lord is the one who hosts me, who creates their products with me—I am inside their products.

I am flesh-red pincers igniting a steel disc amidst wild sparks and alloy spokes. I am a hexagon among rubber studs, clinging to the vertigo of the most treacherous peaks. I am flour that transforms in the fire like no other, kindling ancestral flavors as intense as a childhood memory. I am an impenetrable reptile membrane, an invincible barrier against the element we are made of: water.

It was many years ago that I became what I am
I was trapped in this life like an innocent lamb

I was born from a dream. The dream of someone who didn’t do things like everyone else. Someone who had nothing in mind but absolute quality, divine perfection, all to reach a higher level: purer, higher-performing, more respectful.

I have no time for the distracted or the superficial; I hate mediocrity.

I am excellence. I am the future. I am inside. You have to look for me. And when you find me, you find value.

Now I can never show my face at noon
And you’ll only see me walking by the light of the moon.

From there, from the breaches, I enter the mind without a word. Sometimes, even more than the Brand-lord. That is why I cannot speak.

I want to scream my strengths, shout that I am excellence, attract, showcase, maybe even sell... a product of my own... mine alone. But no. I cannot. I would do it for a while, just to make myself known, but then I would go back to being who I am. I would burn it all down.

So I whisper. I murmur my attributes, my achievements—so powerful and self-evident that they speak for themselves. Brand-lords display me like a medal on their products, to prove their own worth, to show that they make the right choices. Them. Not me: I do not speak. I am just there. Watching, observing. A blade of light in the shadows.

Oh you’ll never see my shade or hear the sound of my feet
While there’s a moon over bourbon street
Ahuuuuuuuuu……..