Before The Water Gets Too High

(album: Wide Awake! - 2018)

Seldom have I ever questioned the end
Still I grow frost when I'm reminded
Euphemisms on a loop interchanged
Which hands get to turn the final page?
And whose throat belongs the swan song
Crisis warming, denial change

State TV helps the public explain
Broadcast beamed into the dry terrain
Images of trench survival
Without hope but soaked with pain
Consequences of reality felt
All conditions of humanity built
On the bridge's ten villages
Waiting for the state to help

Glass barely bends before it cracks
Embedded down into our path
Paved in the crimson of our tracks
Without the chance of turning back

Before the water gets too high
Before the water gets too high

If the clock strikes midnight then
What becomes of our demonstrations?
To which fate have these gatherings fell
Which walls echo all the chance we held
In two faces on the coins
We tossed into the wishing well?

Drinking water on which we subsist
Mixing into rivers that did not exist
Yesterday when all the warning
Signs were there but sorely missed
What's it worth, all the money we made?
Floating idly in a newborn lake
Far above financial centers
Cities sink like market rates

Glass barely bends before it cracks
Embedded down into our path
Paved in the crimson of our tracks
Without the chance of turning back

Before the water gets too high
Add up the bribes you take
And the time can't be bought
By the profits that you make
Before the water gets too high
To float the powers that be
Or is it someone else's job
Until the rich are refugees

Before the water gets too high
Before the water gets too high
Before the water gets too high
Before the water gets too high