Album: Fellini Days
Mr President, you don't know my name,
But you could find it if you really cared,
Because I pay my taxes and I pay my dues,
And all I ask for in return is the truth.
Can we just be honest, I've heard that speech is free,
So please believe me that this address is sincere.
I'm no one special, just a regular guy,
But I just can't keep on wondering why
That the shells we fired, they now kill our own,
And we waste away like shadows in our homes.
I fell from blue skies, fought through desert storms,
I froze in firefights, and I killed someone
That had a father who loved him just like mine,
Who believed that the sacrifice was justified,
In the name of freedom and in the name of God,
While shifting sands hid all our sins and all the blood.
In the wake of glory I flew back home,
I watched videos at night in uniform
Of those towns and cities being torn apart
By those bombs that fool the people by being smart
As they flew down chimneys, along corridors
And explode on film and everyone goes awe!
And you read the stories about how no one's killed,
And I think about the photo that I kept
To remind me that it was all for real,
And the ghost that I've become will be released
To the sands still shifting, that cover all the lies
About what really happened, and who really died.
Was it really worth it? Was it worth the cost?
Did we really take the high ground, or have we lost
All the moral battles? Did we lose the war?
Mr President, I need to know for sure
That with all this knowledge, all this control,
That we were on the right side after all,
That we weren't lied to, that we weren't used,
And the country that we fought for still upholds the truth.
Mr President, you don't know my name,
But you could find it if you really cared.
It's on a black wall, on a cross of stone,
In the Balkan states, the Gulf and close to home,
On not so foreign islands, out on city streets,
Mr President, just tell me why I'm here.
This is my question, this is my life, this is my address,
Mr President.