The Tide

The Tide

In soiled cities and greasy towns,

Broken promises are passed around.

Sold they are as education,

To any with less information.

And the elders there accept their gold,

Faulted glitters should leave them cold.

They walk with steeled averted gazes,

Through streets filled with starving faces.

Now empty aching walking corpses,

They’ve accepted their empathies’ rigor mortis.

The American Dream, it’s banners furled,

Is only one part of a dying world.

And money blooded in drugs and violence,

Cannot fill the angry silence,

Of skies and water now turned brown,

By people who’ve turned their vision down.

Who try self-healing with fancy cars,

And bigger, cleaner, more expensive bars.

And get their dirty hands in off the street,

Where the others are, with naught to eat.

This is the world I that must roam,

This bleeding place, this gutted home.

“Increase the concrete! Tear down the green!

Then rape some brains ‘til they’re scrubbed clean!”

Thus, leave me wandering in frustration,

I am the greater population.

But one thing you won’t catch me doing,

Is your eternal, blackened, unlovely screwing.

Rich man, do not pity me,

I’m glad I’m not you; I’m free.

Cliff Lake 6/12/1994

CliffSongs