Personal Things

[Verse 1]
Time in becomes time out
Group anxieties become personal doubt
Expressing ourselves in dots dots and dashes
Pure cocaine and false eyelashes
Living inside words that seem to lie
Living inside excuses that pass us by
Living inside loneliness becomes a high
Living gets mixed up with wanting to die
A daily question of going insane
While tormenting one another trying to ease the strain
Dreaming of tomorrows we'd like to know
Repressing our thoughts while trying to grow
The heart and soul are not involved
Idle chatter becomes reality while problems go unsolved
Prearranged, prefabricated and preconditioned
We're baptised, advertised and posthumously mentioned
Weaned and groomed for the glory of applause
Living off the mercy of unwritten laws
Shell shocked patrons making peace with God
While admiring the acrobatics of a junkie's nod
Turned into robots through the power of suggestion
We seek an answer and become the question
Afraid we might die before we live
Blessed with life but then afraid to give
We want to be amorous, glamorous and larger than life
Our cheap illusions become high priced strife
Losing ourselves in times of despair
Becoming self defeatists of unusual flair
We rush toward the beginning that might be the end
We sit in the darkness and try to pretend
Pointing fingers while our insides bleed
Committing suicide to fulfill a need
Highly intelligent in a very low way
We speak of existing but have nothing to say
We touch religion and make it seem like hell
But then we touch unholy dreams and wish them well
Faith is replaced with apathy and grief
Indifference is made acceptable and then a belief
Our left eyes all glitter while our right are blind
We submit to this madness and hope it is kind
Distraught women seeking compassion
While turning tricks in high Roman fashion
Finding love at the expense of losing their cool
Looking for happiness but finding a fool
Their moments of trust become deceitful charms
One night stands in strangers arms
Carousing with disaster in very high places
While cutting off noses to spite their faces
While the men play games of power and glory
Tattered remnants of an old war story
Outside themselves inside their heads
Top secret discussions on waterbeds
Men without neither rhyme nor reason
Lost in the depths of mental treason
Abstract victims of the American dream
Victims of a disguised but well planned scheme
Victims of a subtle but dangerous game
Rugged individualism with a psychotic name
We confuse the normal and exhort the extreme
We make war a reality and call peace a dream
American contradictions in Black and White
We illuminate contradiction and call it the light
America provides you with fortune and fame
While stealing your soul for its own acclaim
With the English language at its command
It perpetuates illusion throughout the land
Running big games in tiny print
Before you've got it, its already spent
Making sacrificial lambs of the Middle Class
Indulging in rhetoric with its head up
It lulls you to sleep with the six o'clock news
And then wakes you up and spoon feeds you blues
But from the darkness of ourselves we can find a brighter day
Understanding and truth must show the way
To understand that every man's color will not be his heart
To go inside yourself is where it must start
To learn to be considerate, to learn to be humane
To learn to use power and not become vain
To understand you can be strong and not be crude
You can be outspoken and not be rude
To revile the tyrant, to protect the weak
To insure the innocent their right to be meek
To look on the sea and understand its motion
To understand tenderness and give it devotion
To understand courtesy and to make it a pact
To understand what love is... and make it a fact!
Because we all must struggle, we all must try
Because somewhere in the future we all must die
But to leave a legacy that will long unfurl
That ours too, was a struggle for a better World