A stranger's tune
A memory; elusive, yet still floating past me
Past time and past space, past selves, now strangers
The strangers that follow me won’t go if I follow them too
It's poison, poured into the songs that get stuck inside my head
A stranger's tune —hauntingly sad —a minor kind of sad —Townes Van Zandt waiting around to die kind of sad
Rest, lover
You screamed while you tried to rest, as he tried to hold back what led
You travelled somewhere deep, left not a trace of sanity
“This isn’t something we could’ve changed,” he said
“For things just go even if you latch on so, you better rest now;
rest in a bed where you'll feel something other than regret"
Next to you an old lover, next to you a friend
“Weakness,” he says, “isn’t leading you on,”
“the panic,” he says, “doesn’t have to be feeding on you at all”
You say it’s good to see him and that he’s been on your mind
That the time is going faster, the longer you live your life
A quick sorry for the hassle and and a thank for the kiss
It’s boring the both you —this is all there is
Though you feel like you stand between his life and your dreams
You ask if there’s someone, and if so what she means to him
“What it means,” he says, “is that all of these times we go on living,
so you take your love, you chin up, feel handless, but face on”
As you try and let go, it must feel heavy on your shoulders
You must feel like there’s something huge hovering over you
But he says that there's absolutely nothing that you need,
absolutely nothing that you have to be,
so you better rest now lover, rest
Don’t take the doubt back to bed
From the river to the sea
Early one morning as the sun began to rise,
smoke came running down the hill,
children screaming loud
"Tell us now, tell us now
what part of us they’re burning
Our houses already torn to the ground
Tell us now, tell us now
what part of us they’re struggling with
Free we are, so they say
while flushing our ashes down the drain
the concept goes; nobody’s free until we all are"
Early one afternoon as the wind came flooding in,
chances big and small,
made youth wake up again
"Tell us now, tell us now
what part of us they want to fit
Our future already, for us decided
Tell us now, tell us now
what part of us needs alteration
To match the standard of good behaviour
Well, norm-ally we would think twice baby
Cause it ain’t alright the way it is"
Later one evening as the clouds began to merge,
golden rain came pouring down,
grown ups use fancy words
"Tell us now, tell us now
what part of us they’re buying
Our souls already sold to the money industry
Tell us now, tell us now
what part of the world they’re censoring
melodies of a moaning mass and the sound of the market
crashing into, crashing on our couches"
Late that night the old olive tree firmly stood placed,
while outside the innocent
bombed away
"Shall I tell you now, tell you now
What happens if the lies won’t hold
The corrupt, the brainwashed, all the broken hearts
Should tell you all, tell you all you need to know
Even if the truth won’t be told
Keep watching wide-eyed, over those innocent souls
No one would believe, but we will remember"
That each morning, afternoon, evening
The sun, the wind, the clouds, the trees
The children, youth, the masses, and we
Sung, from the river to the sea"