Pirates

Alix Olson

This is a people as pirates, a people as pirates, a people as pirates...
What's the matter with the brains of the big boys with the big money
Are they bruised are they battered, are they swollen are they bloody
With the wounds and the scars of the people they've mistreated
With the scabs and the heals of the movements they've defeated
Are they bloody, are they bloody, are they bloody, are they bloody?
See, i was taught to believe in a scale of justice
But the people with the power in their pockets, they outweigh us
And now the executive class buys executive branch status
By purchasing supreme court time
And white collar crime in this country becomes a comedy
While the drug war drama gets a bigger, better review
And now it's all lit up in big lights and coming to a town near you.
Meanwhile, enron gives millions to the taliban
To build a pipeline through afghanistan
And the corporate scam of evil is buried deep beneath the sand
Transporting the blood of children in palestine, iraq, and iran
And somehow the rage flows through the pipelines to the pipebombs
Of little white boys in wisconsin
Somehow the rage flows to the suicides in jerusalem cafes
The rage flows to the terror in the new york city subways
The rage flows to the stones flung in algiers,
It flows with nuclear waste down the path of yucca mountain's years,
The rage flows, the rage flows, the rage flows
And the t.v. newscasters say, "repeat after me, rage flows for no reason.
Now stick these antennaes on your forehead, freedom of thought may channel treason,
Freedom of thought may channel treason"
Well, give me one reason, one reason to defy my global people
Cause we got ninety years, if we're lucky, on this planet
And i refuse to eat mine sandwiched between commercials for fake butter and cheese
Caffeine and saccharine food us up and the hypodermic media shoots us up
Until our brains are entombed, petrified, lying side by side next to our 401 k's and our suv's,
Encased in caskets, plastered with compliance,
Chainstored in the chamber of a walmart mummy freeze
And outside this sarcophagus of american flags and god bless's,
Our collective conscience is brought right down to its knees
Brought right down to its knees
Praying forgiveness for this nation exporting numbness
For treasure-looting the oil, the ozone, the airwaves, and the grain,
These are our true colors running
And they are running away with everything.
Cause the big boys have smelled our protests as potent as their poison in our water
That's why they've squashed down our squawking like the chickens in their trucks
I guess we just taste better all cagey and blindfolded
All freaked out and huddled up.
So yeah, i say, no atlas is scary
And yes, i confess, resistance is chilling
But the roadblocks are killing us
And the deadends keep building.
This is a battle of burdens, it's a collision of moral proofs
This is a people as pirates and we are stealing back the truth
We are stealing back the truth
From the brains of the big boys with the big money
Are they bruised, are they swollen, are they battered, are they bloody
Are they bloody, are they bloody, are they bloody?
You gotta steal back the truth, you gotta steal back the truth
You gotta steal back the truth from abc and cbs and cnn
You gotta steal back the truth from disney and hbo
You gotta steal back the truth from npr even, these days,
This is a people as pirates, a people as pirates.
This is a people