Life

It's upsetting when you're born all cryin’
And it don’t end up ‘til your day of dyin’,
When you find yourself workin’ in a minin’ yard,
Workin’ ‘til your hands can’t work so hard,
Coal mines in piles stretch high and wide,
So high that you wonder if there’s even a sky,
The shovel’s as heavy as a barbell’s weight,
Then you look up and see something really faint,
A glimmer of sky, a glimmer of hope,
You lay down your shovel and unfasten your rope,
And that’s when your wings start to grow,
And you feel the sun’s potent, immortal glow

But not everyone has made the cut,
Those who fail burn up in cigarette butts,
For a trolley its twenty five cents you’ll need,
You can take a ride and have your greed,
Fro those who may think they’re lives are a bust,
People sleep on tin cans and rusted saw dust,
And the trolley burns down their only known homes,
And nobody sees them as they go down the road,
Tank wheels reflecting in puddles of blood,
Seen after the storms in the slums of damp mud,
Right below them are barbed wire fences,
And laid right in front are the old war zone trenches

There are so many times when you’ve been caught dreamin’,
So many things inside your heard teamin’
Dreaming of pastures and wide open places,
But when you wake up they leave no traces,
And from second story window sills,
People look down on your to get their thrills,
But you don’t have to take that abuse,
And before you know it you’ve been cut loose,
You’ll leave your villains on a sinkin’ boat sailin’,
We’ll see how they like it when they do the pailin’,
And once you move forward on the rail road track,
There ain’t no way you’re hitchin’ back

The only things left are the noiseless sounds,
Faces of people like playing cards down,
All pilled together in a random stack,
Grasped together by a sturdy thumb tack,
Face down you can’t tell people apart,
But look up at each other, a whole bloody war starts,
And some people’s hearts are stone pipe black,
Traded in for a penny and a cigarette pack,
The candy land tales they dreamt as a child,
The ones that they had for such a short while,
When you lie in bed and springs bury you deep,
You look up from the pillows without any sleep

As you walk down the road and you think at each stop,
If the steep road to nothing is where you have dropped,
One day you’ll see that the whole world’s a failin’,
And people have shrines behind windows to be hailin’,
Corpses are rotting inside beating hearts,
And their lives keep rolling after gears fall apart,
The time will shift like branches in the breeze,
So many locked doors that have never had keys,
You need to find a way out of that place,
Too many gutters have poured down your face,
You have to pave your own way, make your own road,
And not always follow the things you are told,

Do what you want, and do what you should,
Not the things that are bad but the things that are good,
And when this whole crazy world has got you beat,
You can take a stand or take a seat,
I don’t know about you but my legs ain’t broken,
My heart not stopped and my eyes not soakin’,
And when this whole crazy world gets your down,
You can pick yourself up or knock yourself down,
You can always be somewhere,
Where nobody knows you’re even there,
Do you start givin’ up and start your dyin’?
Or do you pick yourself up and keep on tryin’?