The hour is out of joint

Black sun has risen

And the river of words

Is flowing on through

The cages of tradition

They're handing out emptiness

We'll take it, 'cause it's given

Free with this plastic innocence

And these standards of living



Questions, lighted questions

Burnin' holes into my head

Hanging like shadows o'er the sun

Staring out like the eyes of the dead

And sometimes my soul flickers

As the wind of change blows cold

Over the mire of repetition

Down the corridors of rigamarole



What I say, what I think

What I put down in ink

I'm only tryin' to find a way to understand

And I mean no harm

I'm just searching for calm

In the storm of mankind



Do you find it there

In the sea of faces

That drowns you every day

Or in the silence and rubble and empty spaces

Where children and rottweilers play

Is it buried in the praise

Given so cheap

With a meaningless movement of the jaws

In the looking glass

That flatters you

Or in the rattle of hollow applause



Blind circle, moon and sun

Body willing, mind undone

One pain ending while another begins

Lies, ruin, disease

Into wounds like these

Let the truth sting



From the hub to the limit

Through the urban hollows

Out into the poles of the extreme

To echo through the numbness

Of these godless minutes

In the shadow of delusion's regime



But here watching the night

As it opens like a flower

And the day starts to rust

Feeling time pound

Like a silent hammer

On this empire of dust

And I'm thinking 'bout the bullet

And the TV screen, the dollar, and the clenched fist

And if we're searching for peace

How come we still believe

In hatred as the catalyst



Through the borderline

In front and behind

Down the road of thorns

Between the the barbwire and the soul

Bitters and chains

Is all that remains

Where the wheel has rolled



I feel it from the pit of my stomach

Into the ditch of my mind

Inside the chambers of my heart

As I stare half blind

At these walls of cardboard

At this space that I've rented

At your beauty that is crumbling

Though you try so hard to prevent it



On and on

Body willing, mind undone

One pain ending while another begins

Lies, ruin, disease

Into wounds like these

Let the truth sting

Let the truth sting

Let the truth sting