An eye for an eye a tooth for a tooth
The toothless blind man told the truth
"Revenge is sweet it can't be beat
So enjoy it in your youth"
Every dog will have his day
'Cause turnabout is just fair play
Life's too short to be sport
When the piper gets his pay
The world is big and round, injustices abound
But through it all I've found
What goes around comes around
"He who laughs last didn't get the joke"
The bitter angry old man spoke
Payback's a bitch and it's a dish
Best served cold to hungry folk
Let he without sin cast the first stone
Then let me toss a few of my own
If I had my druthers I'd do unto others
Sins for which I can't atone
For a king's ransom or a fool's pittance
Does it make a difference what we try to rearrange?
If the sum's not handsome then it's just good riddance
Here's a penny for your thoughts
Now I'm waiting on my change
So you reap what you sow and the lesson lies in
What you learned before that sun edged
Down below the lost horizon
No good turn goes unpunished
The world is big and round, injustices abound
But through it all I've found
What goes around comes around
"Vengeance is mine," sayeth the horde
Of people who cannot afford
To contemplate the final fate
Of living by the sword, of living by the sword
Of living by the sword
Long before they played the dirge
For the wall that wouldn't stand
When Big Brother felt the urge to purge
You never bit the iron hand
That pulled down the iron curtain
And drew up the five year plan
'Cause if you did you were hurtin' for certain
You could never leave the Promised Land
Subsidize my vodka ration
Legalize your bold decrees
Paralyze my Kafka passion
Bring me crashing to my knees
Alibis replace religion
Organize your Thought Police
Lionize your awful vision
Gimme some guarantees, now
Comrade, beware the gloom
Of a lifetime guarantee
That follows you from womb to tomb
Into obscurity
Sometimes you feel afraid
There is no purity
But you got it made in the shade
Social security
Terrorize a fearful nation
Patronize their yearning pleas
Canonize the implication
"Open minds are enemies"
Legitimize insinuation
Compromise your faculties
Bastardize your own creation
Gimme some guarantees, now
Do you panic, do you revel
In the grand designs of Lord Mephisto?
Bring us down to one level
All according to the manifesto
Sterilize all innovation
Sanitize the dread disease
Galvanize a generation
Fraternize with who agrees
Blot the skies with radiation
Shield your eyes from liberties
Power buys gratification
Gimme some guarantees, now
I've been hiding by days, simply biding my time
Searching so many ways for the reason or rhyme
For my wasted nights, victories thrown away
I should have tasted by rights, now just one thing to say
I'm no proponent of useless regrets
Those torturous "should-haves" from a troubled past
Live every moment that your life begets
Just like you would have if it were your last
I've been hoarding my dreams underground in a sack
For so long now, it seems, that I can't get them back
Waiting for my chance, an opportunity
So that happenstance can make it happen for me
No matter what you've been intending
Regardless what you may have planned
The coup de grace is now impending
The time to act is now at hand
Don't wait forever for that moment to come
I can assure you of the reason because
It almost never will truly become
Reality before your funeral does
Go on, start making plans for the sacrifice
That your dream demands, is it too steep a price?
It's so hard to decide all the relative cost
Of not having tried versus what's gambled and lost
You can depend on me to be extremely
Uninvolved until the hopeless end
When we see nothing's gained and nothing's solved
With hollow words and posturing
By lying prophets fostering
These Pagan Gods who seek to drag us down
Into their tempting private Hell
While you sit perched atop my rafter
Like some self-fulfilling oracle
Surviving in the aftermath of near-profound historical
Events which cloud our jaundiced eyes
And leave us little choice except
To worship Pagan Gods
Who drag us down into the black abyss
Where dead, forsaken, shattered dreams
Lie rotting in the midnight sun
And shadows echo desperate screams
Until the scavengers are done
Your alleged understanding of the way
The world's unfolding, why so many are abandoning
The things they once were holding dearest
Will not change the bottom line
Or buy a precious second
From these Pagan Gods of our design
We answer when we're beckoned and
Betray ourselves, for weakness steals
Our courage, as it falters,
Watch the blood flow from out lost ideals
On sacrificial altars that we've built
So give to me your answer
Just how long will this insanity endure
And spread like cancer which no miracle
Or panacea can cure? And if you ask of me
"Is ignorance the worst form of despair,
Or is it apathy?"
Well, I don't know and I don't care
Because your hypocritical sincerity
And pseudo-genuine concern is like a
Mocking Parody of what we have refused to learn
And all the while these crafty Pagan Gods
Usurp out heart and mind and soul
And drag us deeper down into the hole
Where truth has gone to die
And all your sombre words and mumbled prayers
Half-heartedly deny
The cold hard fact that no one really cares at all
New clothes and fancy car, fine wine and caviar
But fortune and fame are a fleeting pair
You wake up one day and it's not there
It only goes so far, and so I gotta say
Right now, right now, it's up to us, babe
'Cause we're living the good life
Blue chip stock and swiss accounts
Mean nothing without you
It's your precious love that keeps me
Living in the style I'm accustomed to
White pearls and diamond rings, the comfort that it brings
But luxury's like a narrow ledge
One wrong move and you're off the edge
And money can't buy wings, and so I gotta say
Right now, right now, it's up to us babe
Cause we're living the good life
All is fair in love and war
But then again who's keeping score?
Just hold the glass I'll pour, and so I gotta say
Right now, right now, it's up to us babe
'Cause we're living the good life, live it up!
When I look into your eyes they're never blinking
While your blood runs cold as ice, your cool isn't shrinking
And I just can't seem to size up what you're thinking
Just how you get in your grooves
This is one of quite a few questions I'm raising
'Cause we both know that it's true, you're always appraising
People to see what they do, it's really amazing
Just how you learn all your moves
Life's unfolding for the one who looks and finds
Catapulting them to where the bright sun shines
They're beholding what they read between the lines
They just have to read between the lines
When I look into your face it's always impressing
'Cause I get no clue or trace and I'm confessing
It's a most perplexing case, leaving me guessing
Just what it all really proves
You don't show it but I still have seen the signs
And I know it, that your gift is reading minds
Like a poet you just read between the lines
You just have to read between the lines
Everything that I mistook, and all your pretending
Like your condescending look, we'll be amending
'Cause I read you like a book, this chapter is ending
You just have to read between the lines
The cutting edge of all that you believe in
Can drive a wedge so deep into a seaon
That's on the edge, on the edge of treason
To break a pledge, break a pledge of
Personality, hero politician
Rationality, archaic proud tradition
Nationality, sacred superstition
It's all the same to me, it's all the same to me
I can't let go
Until there's something else I can hold onto
You blew a hole
Out of my precious fragile point of view
The staus quo has never been the best but it will do
Now let me know if you have stumbed into something new
But even so, it's really all the same to me
It's all the same to me
The seething rage, your sermons when you tell me to
Spring the cage, cut that soft underbelly then
Turn the page, a bastard Machiavelli in
A new age, a new age of
Unreality, embryonic beauty
Illegality, automatic immunity
Practicality, patriotic duty
It's all the same to me, it's all the same to me
I had a nightmare late last night
That you woke me up from the coolest dream
When I awake later on today
I'll find that it was all a bad reality
I was the one who you love to hate
But we both know it's a thin, thin line
Drawn in the dirt when you hate to love
The only one who would not decline
You're gunna have to learn to cope
When you ride inside the Collide-o-Scope
Use your head, you can't get blood from a stone
Use a stone, you can get blood from my head
I'll throw glass at stone houses til I'm stone cold dead
Punctuality's my strongest trait
There's an appointment with destiny to keep but I'm
A little early to fashionably late
A little late for making up lost time
A certain someone holds the keys to my heart
But cannot ascertain exactly what they're for
Asserting once again it's not gunna start
I'm certain no one can decide if they're sure
You play the angle along the slope
When you ride inside the Collide-o-Scope
Lead a horse to water but he won't drink
Hit the well to often, you'll take a dive
If heaven's this, I'm better off alive
I gave you something you thought was fake
Well, it was real so I grant a reprieve
But you returned more than I can take, you say it's
Better to steal than it is to receive
Where it ends you can only hope
When you ride inside the Collide-o-Scope
I'd walk the fires of a hundred million wars
Between empires where the scalding lava pours
Past funeral pyres and other-worldy doors
That don't betray they lead the way to where
The voice of evil roars
I'd walk the fire of a thousand billion Hells
Where flames reach higher, like endless burning sentinels
With mad desire, drowning out the anguished yells
Of men who tried and men who cried
And men who never lived to tell
I would walk the fire, I would walk the fire
I'll walk the fire up above, down below
I'll walk the fire all around us
I'll walk the fire up above, down below
I'll walk the fire that surrounds us in my soul
I'd walk the fire that serves as Satan's Gate
And through the mire of his all-consuming hate
And I'd aspire to master my own fate
That which destroys sound reason's voice
Is that which also can create
I would walk the fire, I would walk the fire
The old man's lonely but for his pain
As he shuffles along the Seine
I walked there for endless days in a haze
Waiter fill my glass once more
Drown her ghost on some distant shore
Let the tide claim her memory with me
I walk the beach at night and howl at the moon
My body sweats for her but it's winter in June
Bridges burned still exact their tolls
Past the alleys of broken souls
Yet my heart will lead me there, will no one care?
I drop a stone from river's edge
Denying my reflection's dread
Blue alibis run deep and strong where I belong
Hush, hush, secret rendezvous in smoky French cafes
Whispered plans of bloody coups and desperate power plays
Contacts taking chances, living proof that treason pays, yeah
Casting furtive glances at illicit attaches
Undercover operator skulking down the street
Incognito instigator practicing deciept
Traitor and interrogator, symbiotic friends, yeah
Professional eliminator, means to someone's ends
Well beyond the point of good and bad
And wrong and right
No one can annoint the life they've had
Keeping out of sight, shadows in the night
Shifty-eyed informer passing information to
A hired gun assassin knows exactly what to do
Find the undependable loose end that knows too much, yeah
Silence the expendable with his lethal touch
Shattered sobs of diplomats and dignitaries compromised
Never stops self-rigtheous scheming visionaries who devised
Dirty jobs for rabble-rousing mercenaries well-advised, yeah
Angry mobs of chanting revolutionaries organized
Planting moles assigned with roles designed to gain them trust
Go-betweens with guilty souls just doing what they must
Clandestine meetings of intrigue when lust for power calls, yeah
Warring factions join in leaugue, the puppet leader falls
Once upon a long lost age
The same old play on a different stage
Was performed in full regalia
Til the bitter end with grim determination
A timeless tale of battles fought
While every twist and turn of plot
Was truly mourned, I'm here to tell ya
So you'll comprehend this vital information
Seems an up and coming fella's
Dreams are like the Cinderalla
Story into which his heart so deeply delves
But guys who go from rags to riches
Rise and know their chosen niche is
Turning cynical and vicious like themselves
A commoner, well-caked with mud,
Aspired to the royal blood
Embarking on a sacred mission
Just to realize his altruistic goal
Through hook and crook and wild fate
The crown and title of "the Great"
Were darkening his pure ambition
With a compromise deep in his mortal soul
So where's the moral to this oft-told story?
When a man calls no man master
He can tumble from the heights of glory
To the depths of complete disaster
And the shame of his fall from grace
Feels the same most any place
There's no difference 'cause it's just as gory
When you talk about, when you talk about
When you talk about us
For eons without interruption
King's ruled peons with corruption
There's no respite, yet the hands of fate will claw
The bleeding eyes from grand delusions
Leading wise men to conclusions
That no despot can escape his fatal flaw
And though the peasant makes the grade
A hefty price must still be paid
He does the thing that's only proper
While the hour glass advances resolutely
Soon it's plain he can't resist
Enforcing with an iron fist
Because the King who was a pauper
Finds his power has consumed him absolutely
I know a place just east of Nowhere
The aspiring losers go there to dig the scene
They reminisce about how things never were
And plan on how they'll never be
I know the way to get to Nowhere
Just pick a direction then sit back and wait for a ride
(You don't need a guide)
It's not nice to visit, but it makes a suitable home
For those with nothing left inside
I'm going to Nowhere fast
I don't want to be the last on my block
To talk the talk and walk the walk
Nowhere is etched in their faces
But better than some of the places I've seen
Thought it's just as mean
I made the mecca out to Nowhere
Where kindred souls doing much worse than me
(make me feel better)
It's not much to look at, but who's looking anyway?
Life's very cheap, excuses are free
Nowhere's a comfortable trap
It's located here on the map, can't you see?
Right where it ought to be, inside you and me
Nowhere's the end of the line
And no one will ask why you're crying in your beer
Or why you're here
Late at night the moon is nowhere to be found
And slumber offers me no peace
(Like a silent scream)
Though I'm so afraid to face the darkness all around
I'm too much a cynic to suffer a dream
You know I'm feeling down
Like I've never been down before
This dirty-dealing town has knocked me to the floor
And I know I should pull myself to my feet, yeah
Yes, I know I should use the door, hit the street, yeah
But the strength to overcome has taken five
I need some inspiration, a reason to be alive
This emptiness inside has just replaced my soul
And since my spirit died
I need something to make me whole
Even though I still struggle with all my might
It's so hard to be strong with no end in sight
And my will to rise above has up and gone
I need the faith and hope that I can somehow carry on
I need something for real that can show the way
But for now I'll just deal with it day by day
Should I prepare to gracefully accept defeat?
I need a cause to fight for to make my life complete
When I look back at all the years
I spent so idle courting fears
I feel the need for something real I can depend upon
So many broken promises, defeated doubting Thomases
Have tried to lock my soul away, they can't have it
And now I've got no time for doubts
Or second-guessing ins and outs
I spend my time just living large, dance in my corner
Til I hear the bell life's ringing
Win or lose I'll come out swinging
and they'll never lock my soul away, no they'll
Never lock my soul away
Close your eyes, tell me what you think you see
Silhouettes of long-lost fantasies
When the truth beyond the night
Slowly seduces your senses your soul your sight, it's alright
One moment in time, one moment within
One moment to revel in wild abandon, don't fight it, give in
Take my hand, tell me what you think you feel
The creation of a memory
With the truth beyond the night
Unleash the secret that feeling's you had inside
Have not died
One moment in life, one moment to live
One moment to drown in the fire and passion
this moment can give
The temple sits atop the hill
The grass cut close, but still
It seems foreboding yet it always seems to fill
With hungry souls in search of perfect states of grace
They may not need it but they still come just in case
A higher power somewhere listens to their prayers
Then offers guidance for their many mortal cares
Devoutly seeking one true answer in the light
And hoping that they've somehow
Placed their faith in what is right
Allelujiah! going to the temple
Allelujiah! Going right away
Arrive at the temple Sunday morning guilty as can be
Just say your prayers
By Sunday afternoon footloose and fancy free
Salvation's so intoxicating, easy to believe, but I declare
I never thought it was this easy to achieve
Does the temple cleanse me of my wicked, evil ways?
Am I hypocrite attending once each seven days?
Assuage my sinner's consience, digging deep to offer alms
By Sunday night I'm true to form
No mess, no guilt, no pesky qualms
Is the temple's power real or just a mental crutch?
I should be a true believer, but I think too much
Should I surrender with blind faith? That's such a bitter pill
When God gave me the gift to exercise my own free will
I need some solid answers but I sure won't hold my breath
I hope these taxing questions are resolved upon my death
Oh Lord!
I once knew a man who thought the moon
Was just a ball of cheese
I made him understand, and none too soon
Now when he looks he sees a
Rocky sphere 250,000 miles a way
And it's clear he sees things differently today
He's prematurely grey
The fist of fate didn't seem so hard
As a kid in the old school yard
You just survived with faith and innocence
But seeing life through knowing eyes
Is like a blessing in disguise
You realize man's problems are immense
I once knew a girl who thought her wealth
Was all she ever needed
She swallowed a pearl and now her health
Is something to be heeded
Ain't it grand that everything just had to be her way
People change but sometimes that's not how they stay
'Cause there's a price to pay
Ooh baby, life supplies it's own demand
And maybe it all depends on where you stand
On this game where winners often brood
If you do you're screwed, if you don't you're damned
The world's no place to be naïve
So just be careful what you believe
But if you're not your one excuse is this
Giving up on fairy tales
Means growing up, and it sure pales
Compared to youth 'cause ignorance is bliss
Now that man I knew is feeling glad
Oh, he's so scientific
But that girl is blue, the life she had
Before was so terrific
Goes to show how different folks will keep a
different score
What you know or don't, it's either or
And which can hurt you more
I hope one day before I die
(A fiery baptism)
I'll have the wherewithal to buy
A fancy palace like Versaille
(A rebirth of the wisdom)
I'll tell you now exactly why
To fill it with the works we know
(That knowledge has arisen)
By guys like Carravaggio
Throw in some Michealangelo
(The light of altrusim)
And even Edgar Allen Poe
A temple of alliances
(Shines through a crystal prism)
So that a man asks why, and says
He lives for arts and sciences
(On basic humanism)
And owns major appliances
(Chorus)
I wanna be a Renaissance Man
With a versatile master plan
To learn everything that I can
And ponder things, and ponder things
And ponder things I don't understand
Once the reform gets its start
(Ornate pieces on the board)
Through fine, respected works of art
Endeavoring to do their part
(Locked in combat, moving toward)
And drive dark ages from your heart
With noblest intentions
(Their final, bloody, just reward)
Like daVinci's cool inventions
A true connoisseur still mentions
(Under the opponent's sword)
Albrecht Durer's dark pretensions
Even though we have a stake in
(Though the hot, red blood that poured)
An attempt to reawaken
Knowledge, just for it's own sake, in time
(Struck a most disturbing chord)
May prove to be forsaken and
(Chorus)
I'm gunna learn astronomy
(Looking at the populous)
And Keynesian economy
And certainly I wanna be
(Around the great Acropolis)
Secure in my autonomy
To read from Aristotle, he
(The teachings of wise Sophocles)
And Plato know they ought to see
That all the things they taught'll be
(Reap a bitter crop because)
The cause of my lobotomy
They thought about and theorized
(It can't stop the Apocalypse)
And then they finally realized
The fact that they philosophized
(Within the whole Metropolis)
Alone can't save the civilized
I wanna be a Renaissance Man
With a versatile master plan
To learn everything that I can
And ponder things, and ponder things
And ponder things...