Grace Under Pressure

All that we can do is just survive
All that we can do to help ourselves is stay alive


Ragged lines of ragged grey
Skeletons, they shuffle away
Shouting guards and smoking guns
Will cut down the unlucky ones


I clutch the wire fence until my fingers bleed
A wound that will not heal
A heart that cannot feel
Hoping that the horror will recede
Hoping that tomorrow we'll all be freed


Sickness to insanity
Prayer to profanity
Days and weeks and months go by
Don't feel the hunger
Too weak to cry


I hear the sound of gunfire at the prison gate
Are the liberators here?
Do i hope or do i fear?
For my father and my brother, it's too late
But i must help my mother stand up straight


Are we the last ones left alive?
Are we the only human beings to survive?

I see red
And it hurts my head
Guess it must be something
That i read


It's the color of your heartbeat
A rising summer sun
The battle lost or won
The flash to fashion
And the pulse to passion
Feels red
Inside my head
And truth is often bitter
Left unsaid
Said red red
Thinking about the overhead
The underfed


Couldn't we talk about something else instead?


We've got mars on the horizon
Says the national midnight star
(it's true)
What you believe is what you are
A pair of dancing shoes
The soviets are the blues
The reds
Under your bed
Lying in the darkness
Dead ahead


And the mercury is rising
Barometer starts to fall
You know it gets to us all
The pain that is learning
And the rain that is burning
Feel red
Still...go ahead
You see black and white
And i see red
Red
(not blue)

An ill wind comes arising
Across the cities of the plain
There's no swimming in the heavy water
No singing in the acid rain
Red alert
Red alert


It's so hard to stay together
Passing through revolving doors
We need someone to talk to
And someone to sweep the floors
Incomplete
Incomplete


Chorus
The world weighs on my shoulders
But what am i to do?
You sometimes drive me crazy
But i worry about you
I know it makes no difference
To what you're going through
But i see the tip of the iceberg
And i worry about you...


Cruising under your radar
Watching from satellites
Take a page from the red book
Keep them in your sights
Red alert
Red alert


Left and rights of passage
Black and whites of youth
Who can face the knowledge
That the truth is not the truth?
Obsolete
Absolute


Chorus


Absalom, absalom, absalom

Things crawl in the darkness
That imagination spins
Needles at your nerve ends
Crawl like spiders on your skin


Pounding in your temples
And a surge of adrenaline
Every muscle tense to fence the enemy within


I'm not giving in to security under pressure
I'm not missing out on the promise of adventure
I'm not giving up on implausible dreams
Experience to extremes
Experience to extremes...


Suspicious-looking stranger
Flashes you a dangerous grin
Shadows across your window...
Was it only trees in the wind?


Every breath a static charge,
A tongue that tastes like tin
Steely-eyed outside to hide the enemy within


To you, is it movement or is it action?
Is it contact or just reaction?
And you...revolution or just resistance?
Is it living, or just existence?
Yeah, you! it takes a little more persistence
To get up and go the distance


Chorus