You fell across your guns like forty children on a sleigh ride
the money in your pockets wouldn't buy you little sin
You did your best to make it with the masters of the poorhouse
But in the end it was the lend that came to do you in
Your children cannot smile for hunger, now there's nothing left
Of betrothal sweet and sweaty and a meagre sum bequest
The fence is pale and slender as the hopes with which you dressed
The grass is greener where there isn't mud
And it might have felt like forty rivers forded for this life
But really you became the banks of every steaming shore
Never touched the water did your children or your wife
Never touched the water did your thirsty vision sore
A colosseum built of pith on which we stand so proud
The men that lead us still are men like any in the crowd
The men that lead us still to death to stillbirth without warning
The women we should love, that you should love are still in mourning
"Call back later" Joan of Arc cries wailing in the night
"You men have left me fallen for my pride in black and white
You haggard beasts of little principle have lost the fight
To false egalitarian concoctions of the right"
These would be times to make a stand or even take in hand
The words of those forgotten, slammed by leaders and their claims
Instead we'll opt for times to tar and feather thoughts of guilty undertakings
More the merrier, consider your brief spot of fame
The down and out are out and down the cannot wear the spit
Of so many who would claim the crown for running at the shit
The fools were dancing all the time to let these athletes know
That everytime they left the ground their ignorance would show
Now you'll sing some praise, and now they'll scratch your back
And forgotten will be ways of lengthening the slack
take me high above this, and watch it all descending
It's nothing that we have not seen for years as something pending
And now the field hacks and mauls at population's crawling
Upon crushed knees designed to fall for frail consumer callings
Bring all your fights together and call them just one war
Do what you will man - we've seen it all before