Richard II

(album: The Monitor - 2010)

Soon you'll be burning orphanages down
Watching ashes scattering all over town
And when the smoke gets too close to the ground
You'll see blue trampling over gray and green over brown

And you'll be cutting ears off of dead men
Pumping shells into the carcass for hours on end
Then you'll swear that we've always been friends
And be unable to conceive it could ever happen again

Of course, you have never been to blame
For the various horrible things that you did
You may have gotten away with them too
If not for those meddling kids

The lump in your throat, the ache in your bones
They are nobody's fault but your own

And whatever amount you paid
For your many distractions, well, it was too much
Oh, and at the end of the day
To whatever extent that you hate yourself, it isn't enough

And we can no longer afford
Waiting for someone to lift this terrible swift sword
In our basements, we all look so bored
We've never seen the glory of the coming of the Lord

There will be parties, there will be fun
There'll be tall gallows for everyone
And we will all be sleeping easy upon the sinking of the sun
But there's only one dream that I keep close
And it's the one of my hand at your throat

I will not deny my humanity
I'll be rolling in it like a pig in feces
'Cause there's no other integrity
In awaiting the demise of our species

May you endure every indignity knowing all the while that life will go on
And when it ends, may you have nothing to say, except that it took too long
And may I be there somehow
Asking, "Where are all your friends now?"