Fixed Frequencies

(album: Potemkin City Limits - 2005)

Here in the land that Abraham was promised to receive
We listen to you catechize from your pulpit overseas.
You mourn the proofs of our barbarity.
But dry your eyes. Oh Pharisee, a settler's cant we both speak.
We both read from the same old played out scripts and hum familiar tunes,
Broadcast on fixed frequencies, stuck in locking grooves.
We both profess noble intent as we civilize human impediments.
So if your hands are clean then noblesse oblige that you wipe that "who me?" look off your face and concede
Our designs separated by nothing more than place and time.
Different scenes, same crimes.
Pray, let him who's without sin cast the first statues of
The former rogues turned folk heroes that your forefathers hung.
Don't lecture me about plundered soil while you loaf upon your father's spoils.
We want nothing more than what you already have:
A comforting set of exculpatory "facts"
Like, say, the myth of an empty land and a conquest so complete
We can pull these tanks from our streets
And hand the loose ends over to bureaucrats and become just like you
Lounging carefree in your cafes, absolved from sin
And human grenades. Entre nous, how did your desert bloom?