You ask me how I feel and tell me to
be brave, and so I'll sing a song
that's etched in pain upon this hopeless heart:
"My country, 'tis of thee!" I scream into
this faithless wind which rakes across
our lives, and hope the silent rocks themselves *
will hear the cries of freedom dying, break
their silence, smash the lingering lies like grain
upon the Miller's stone. The swelling breeze
of freedom that swirls above the wicked wind
now casts the fatal flour to the trees!
I'll paint a picture with my song to show
the anger and despair that loom like frac-
tured memories before my weeping eyes.
The brush I use is broad (but only made
so by the bristling mass of muddled minds
so tangled up in lies); my country is
my canvas stretched across a land that's pocked
by graves too early dug; my colors are
her people, somehow staying vibrant still,
combined and mixed to form the infinite hues
so subtle and sublime. This rainbow arc
of hope is being covered by black
and boisterous hues of stupid, mindless noise.
Ignore the truth, and watch America drown
in darkest strokes of madness. Look at how
America's dream is stolen! Wake! and find
too late that what you have allowed to come
to pass has taken precious human lives!
I ask for no forgiveness when I say
that those who have with pride convinced themselves
a charlatan did all he could, are fools,
unknowing tools, used and cast aside
to rust upon the blood-stained earth we love.
Come and sit among the dead with me.
Stare into the face of death with me!
Breathe deeply; drink this bitter wine.
Become drunk at last with all that you've denied.
I point to one among the thousands here,
a soul no diff'rent from the rest who lay
beneath this hallowed ground, except that she
completed me. And now that open wound
within my soul consumes my life, becomes
the blackest hole that drains the future from
this shattered sleep of days. Can you deny
the truth of all these untold stories here,
deny these souls are nothing more than ghosts?
Now stand, and walk with me with steady stride
into a future fairly chosen by
all those who understand that truth still lives
and thrives among the dead-strewn land.
I sing that we are all to blame, of course,
but understand that truth denied will kill.
I turn and look behind me at my path,
at all the things now buried in the past,
and see a dancing clown who steals the light
from everything that's real. We're on the stage
with him, against majority's will; we've let
these mindless masons build an unseen wall
of lies denied: the clown is dancing still.
I turn away to look ahead; my love
behind me, trampled under brutal foot,
the uncaring, unseeing, grotesquely dancing clown
continues on, although the spotlight fades.
I try to wrestle rage into the ground,
but you have gone too far when lies become
some obscene creed to which you bow. I look
ahead, though time has ravaged all I am,
has ravaged all our country's hopes and dreams.
It's time we journeyed on, 'though discord sings
the song. The choir master's task is set,
as yet his gentle cadence still unknown.
Our voices have been heard; the truth will out;
We'll venture forward as our fathers did
and fight for freedom's truth that you deny.
So come or not, for I no longer care.
Your song of lies has died in freedom's air.