words

How easily the spirit is crushed. Under the weight of lie-filled volumes and rote memorization. Under the feet of the champions of what is. Under our own feet as we run towards the sun in the distance all our lives only to find it elusively moves with us.

The gossamer naïveté of youth is traded for thick hides of sobriety
Dreams die at hands of careers
Dropped into a cycle from which no exit
We are given no real choice

Not for a second can we believe this
Never trade what you hold for their world
Never trade in
Never let go
Hold on—Hold on

CONSUMERISM IS COMPLIANCE
When a compassionate person says they don’t care
About underpaid 8-year olds
Slaving in American factories in Indonesia
When a loyal person feels
No loyalty towards other beings
And advocates wholesale robbery
Of the working poor
I know there’s an enemy
I know I’m not fucking wrong
I know that there is a purpose
I know where my energies belong

When an honest person endorses lies
When a strong person bows down
Without any question
I know there is a cause
I have found a reason
I’ve discovered my purpose
I remember why I’m 24
Angry poor & dirty

We cannot trade compliance
For the brass rings that they sell
We must resist the offer
To sell each other into slavery
And now, as it stood before
Our silence equals death
We are responsible for every action that we take in our lives.

So if buying their lies gives them power
Refuse resist consumerism is compliance

TAKE BACK YOUR LIFE

I feel that I’ve thrown away my life
I and I should wake up and realize
That I can’t get back the time
I’VE LOST
But if I could get back the days
Would I really make a change
Or would things just stay the same?
DON’T WAIT
You could start to live your life today
Don’t listen to the shit they fucking say
They just follow and obey
FUCK THEM
People taught to work, consume and sleep
Teach us to fall in line like sheep
Now my hunger for life is just too deep
FOR ME / TO GIVE / MY LIFE / TO MINDLESS REPETITION ANYMORE
BUT IF / I TRY / I MAY TAKE BACK MY LIFE
I SEE / BLUE SKIES / NO LONGER THROUGH DEAD EYES
MY ARMS / WILL RISE / AND I’LL SCREAM AT THE SKY
NO MORE/ NO MORE / WE WON'T TAKE THIS ANYMORE

RESURGENCE

America’s husbands stand poised
To ‘reclaim’ their roles as supreme leaders
Cheered on by televangelists
and gym teachers.
Desecrating the flag may soon become a criminal act
While old men say freedom of speech is fine, provided you say the right things.

Freedom isn’t freedom if it’s sexual
Freedom isn’t freedom if it’s dissenting
Freedom isn’t freedom if it’s ‘unamerican’
Freedom isn’t freedom if you disagree

The only freedom we have is to participate in the capitalist system and proudly revere those who have fallen to defend that right.

Every stitch in the flag they love is another life wasted to perpetuate the malignant spread of free market throughout the world.

OUR APPETITES ARE DESTROYING US

(a.k.a. appetite for destruction)

Never in our worst nightmares
Could we foresee the blight set upon this land
How the policies of the smiling heads
Will destroy us in the end

And only will they subside
When there’s nothing left to own
And inside of our stomachs
Are where their seeds are sown

Women forced into labor
To assemble the shoes we wear
Profits are derived from suffering
The same profits that we share

And our streets may be ‘paved in gold’
But they overflow with blood
While murder rape and torture
And in the common good

Our joy will remain tainted
As long as we help guide their hands
We must do all in our power
To destroy their global plans

For only will they subside
When there’s nothing left to own
Because inside of our stomachs
Are where their seeds are sown

DISPOSEABLE

Between the cracks fall the victims of a hidden war
Where the living casualties become nothing but uncomfortable reminders
Wracked with guilt, instead of helping we chose to simply ignore them
Handing down attributions--that they somehow deserve their station in life
Anything to deflect our own complicity, the roles we play
Taking part in a system where human livelihood is drained and the remnants thrown away

when the basic necessities of life are regarded as commodities, when a third of all homeless men are veterans who have fought for ‘freedom’, and then found themselves kicked toward the street as repayment for services rendered, we are not equal. This is not freedom. The homeless community are victims of an unlevel playing field, a system set against them from the very beginning, not their own laziness or sloth.

These men and women are not ‘bums’
The only thing that sets us apart is our privilege
And the good fortune to have received what they have not
Reforms are passed to push them out of view
While nothing is done to rectify the situation
In our world life truly is disposeable

In the streets these are real human beings
So start fucking treating them that way.

MARCH 29, 1998

Standing amidst waves of crashing sound, one can find importance in all of this. Of a thousand false gestures, maybe one thing does feel true. Under stifling waves on insincerity, maybe something does ring true. In the heartbreak of an instant, as all question is removed...

Words and emotions are scattered like seeds on a seemingly barren soil, yet some still take root as malnourished fledgelings beneath a blackened sky. Passion can be kindled at the oddest of times, with fires set in hearts long cold. A realization - beneath this hollow rhetoric, this is my life, this is my love. And from this day forth, my path is chosen. And from this day forth my lot has been cast. As long as this moment is kept alive in my heart I will never give up any of this.

Because I found myself on a filthy warehouse floor, unable to speak, move or think, but inspired to do all three, perpetually, until I die.

Standing amidst waves of crashing sound, I remember why I'm here.

LOVESONG

Take my hand, we'll set the fucking night on fire to create the dawn.
[Because this is more real than anything they can sell]
This is the struggle for freedom and that in itself is liberation
[Because this fire is lit by a thousand torches]
Let us cast off the shackles of those who would wear the hide of our slaughtered spirits and exist, if only for a moment, in the world glimpsed in our songs and collectively spoken hopes.

And my heart never beat this hard for something so true.

The seconds pass as we all die, forced to exist in subjugation. But let us now get off our knees and pry the hours back from the cold grip of death.

OTHELLO