Shall Never Lose Its Power

(album: La Dispute - 2008)

The lion isn't sacred when not sleeping near the lamb,
it is evil when it eats unless it's feeding from the damned,
all the children painted diagrams of god upon their hands,
hoping somewhere on this shaking earth they could find a place to stand.

it's a tyrant to the foreigners who've never seen the land,
they feel safer than a statue when they've got a spear in hand,
it is pregnant with the fury that the pain in life demands.
yes, it's fear--but it's a fear that understands.

and what's left is a heartbeat, speaking,
"hands off your fate, child, you'll bury yourself in mistakes."
like a dream that i had of lost faith it fades away but still thunders onward.
every pulse was a hand with its palm up,
fed with bodies and bread soaked in blood.
somewhere, someday, it'll leave but tell me, someone,
where does it go?

what tied our hands tight to the train tracks, then backed off slowly?

what does the heart say? "see the reverse. there's an answer there."

i am the moth-drenched love of dead mules,
as stable as sand in a windstorm. and i shake like a spider in the rain
when you say,
"my, my, the ways i've changed since then--the ways i've changed."
and all i ever say is,
"i'm..."

and it hits like a brick to the back of your head. like, goodbye, five times.
one for each finger.
and you say,
"my, my, the ways i've changed since then--the ways i've changed."
and all i ever say is,
"i'm tired."

we turned our water into whining, shouting, "let us be like christ."
but then the whining turned to wonder, and the wonder turned to ice.
once, we were graceful steeples, hands held upward and eyes wide in suspense.
now, we are tangled like intruders in the wires of the fence.

for a fence is built to protect what lies inside of it.
do you still feel sick? because i do.