Tail Lights

Beyond the Rubicon

Now Rome is on fire

We’ve been ridin’ shotgun

Beside a getaway driver

Tried to get some education

Now they pretend I’m guilty of some crime

They keep sending those letters

To tell me I’m living on borrowed time

What did I learn besides the fact

That the system is a shell game

Odds always favor the house

And the damned pit bosses feel no shame

Go ahead and comment

Privileged spectators to the fight

Tell me to keep working ever harder

Without any end in sight

Don’t ya tell me to be patriotic

As tyranny wears no disguise

I just don’t have patience to listen

Tell it to my tail lights

I know it’s said Rome wasn’t built in a day

But in a couple decades it’s been sacked

So-called public servants tell us to 

join a press-gang and help build back

We aren’t the ones guilty of tearing it down

For the true looters sit upon high

Like spectators in the colosseum 

Jeering for gladiators to fight

Don’t tell me how to clear the speck

While you got that whole log in your eye

We know about the bunga bunga parties

Privilege buys any forbidden delight 

Don’t ya tell me to be productive

As decadence wears no disguise

I just don’t have patience to listen

So, tell it to my tail lights

Karma exacts a toll for

crossing this continent it seems

Our ancestors cast others out to 

make way for spreading their seed

It wasn’t with malice that they crossed

The powers-that-be used them as pawns

Called their plight “manifest destiny”

In order to pompously goad them on

Now a new generation feels pressured to flee

This time tetraethyl lead is the blight

Drives the aging into psychopathy

So that they cannot empathize with the plight

Don’t ask me to stick around

And rebuild what ya’ll set alight

I just don’t have patience to listen

So, tell it to my tail lights 

Downer Cow

Don’t be such a downer cow they say

Come join in all the reindeer games we play

Don’t you dare ask who moved your cheese

We own you and do with you as we please

We’ve got you now, so assimilate

Give up your soul and you’re sure to be great

Submit completely or blackballed you’ll be

Go ahead and leave, after all you’re free

Bribery made us you sovereign lords

Representation goes to who can best afford

So no amount of votes will get the people far

Impirio in imperium we are

Don’t be such a downer cow they say

There is more life force to squeeze out of your day

For your damages we need not pay

For isn’t it the downer cow they slay

Hearts and Minds

You think you're doing enough

You think you're doing fine

You think you can keep on bidin' your time

There were the right things to say

But you never said them

They weren’t even written on the prompter you read

You think you did the right things

Won’t apologize

In the name of law and order you destroyed lives

The overseer’s scion

Exacting the debts

Only we debtors have promises that must be kept

Just there Bidin’ your time for 

Thirty-five years

Demagoguing pearl clutching white mice and their fears

So many locked away

For what should be no crime

Now you ain’t gonna win the hearts and minds

You want us to believe

You’ve gotten sweeter with time

But you ain’t gonna win our hearts and minds

And you, glowing orange

Don’t think you’re in the clear

You’ve lived your whole life insulated from fear

Win or lose you’ll get 

what is coming to you

Not a threat, just soothsayer delivering news

You think you’ve done great

The best there’s ever been

But self-exaltation will end in abasement again

Is it so hard to learn

Crushing dissent is disgrace

The people will teach--won’t take a punch in the face

You’ve bought votes on the range

You’ve bought votes in the lofts

But transactions alone only get you so far

At the end of the day

You think true freedom is crime

So you’ll never win our hearts and minds

The numbers aren’t with you

Among those still alive

And you’re never gonna win our hearts and minds

It's time to stand down

Occupation must end

Tanks and fatigues have no place on streets again

You try to outlaw our lives

The people punish this sin

Maybe we'll be lenient if you make great amends

Otherwise a cleansing fire

Will separate silver from dross

And fill a dark hole with tin-badged despots

Why the people rage

can't be a mystery

Fuzz ought long ago been left in the dustbin of history

Still time to surrended

And make restitution

Restored social compact may curb revolution

Social unrest always stems

From treason on high

That's why you can't win these hearts and minds

Soothsayer warns

Oh, beware the ides

You're never gonna win these hearts and minds

.

Throwaway Empire

Nobody admires the ruins, Of a throwaway empire

They left a shitty plastic flag on the moon

The used whalebone to make nature groan

And to make all the ladies swoon

Built a facade instead of civilization

Around the worship of worldly mammon

They had just enough of the right kind of faith

To make them sacrifice the innocents

At night the rubble glows, rusty water flows

Watch out for feral tigers and the razorbacks

Relic of the frontier, I only survive out here

Guiding safaris for pseudo-brave guys named Vlad

Some folks grow things, by scratching in the earth

In the spots that aren’t too radiated

Some smelt the oxidized beams that lay around
Skim the dross and sell the remnant

That’s the homage we pay to that throwaway empire

That barely registers in our memories

Because even when it was, it was working toward

Ceasing ever to be!

--

Cold Light of Day

I used to think I was the only one

evermore under the gun

And had to self induce mania 

just to get through each day

Now I see that others do it too

With what they smoke

or drink or pop or chew

to push the trauma out of the way

Until foolishness floods the land

So many pretty houses built on sand

And when calamity strikes

It’s so hard to understand 

It simply can not stay

The same old goddamn way

Once we’ve seen this world

Under the cold light of day

A knack for breeding in captivity

Or rather were we bred selectively

Spiritually abused and indoctrinated

In order to serve and plough under the yoke?

And so they keep the mass guilty

Reminded of their own redundancy

Until they forget the feelings

Of a wild and roaming liberty

And so on and on the cycle goes

As inevitable as the storm that blows

Away the sands on which we’ve 

built this house and this charade

It simply can not stay

The same old goddamned way

Once we’ve seen this world

Under the cold light of day