1. _ Grey Victory
[ lyrics: natalie merchant/music: j.c.lombardo & robert buck ]
There was light and atomic fission
Swelling wind
Rising ash
Tide of black rain
Cement seared shawdow traces
Reminiscent of their last commands
Instantly one thousand flames arising
Ill scent the burning hides surrounding
A settlement debased entirely
Enola gay had made a casual delivery
Please build a future, darling
With our bomb
Cherish and love it
For the sake of
Earth bound kingdom come
The undersides of fallen metal trusses
Evil debris of human bodies
Each window's glass shards pelted
Secure confines
Brittle collapse
Neighbors lay beside
Each other unknowing
Faces scorched of all familiar bearing
Too few hands
Many wounds for closing
Marred by
Thirsting
Anguish
Fear lamenting
Here we stand
At the door to gold atomic age
Don't spoil your face with worry
Trust in
Earth bound kingdom come
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2. _ The Latin One
[ lyrics: wilfred owen/music: j.c. lombardo ]
Bent double like old beggars in sacks
Knockkneed and cursing or coughing like hags
Men marched on sleeping some without boots
Fatigue drunken deaf still to the hoots
Of breaking gas shells
Dropping softly behind
But limped on bloodshod
All went lame all went blind
Gas gas quick boys fumbling helmets in time
Someone still screaming a man in fire or lime
Under a grey cloud dim dark through green light
In all my dreaming before my helpless sight
He plunges at me
Choking guttering drowning
Put in a wagon he had to keep pace
As his eyes melt to his face
If you could hear blood
Gurgling from ruptured lungs
If you could witness
Vile sores on innocent tongues
You would not tell me
Not with such pride and such zest
The lies of history
Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori
Some desperate glory
Pro patria mori
As witness disturbs the story
Pro patria mori
Stand firm boys breathe the glory
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3. _ Daktari
[ lyrics: natalie merchant & j.c. lombardo/music: j.c. lombardo ]
Like a weasel in the clover
You tilt toss pop turn over
Sit down!
Tremble and weave like a moth
By flame deceived
Sit down!
Spill with your words caught up
Dance in your room
Slide like you're buttered up
Roll back the tomb
Sit down!
Bolt scuff jilt chase circle riddle
Shake in haste
Sit down!
When the thunderclouds sound
Ants scatter to high ground
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4. _ My Mother The War
[ lyrics: natalie merchant & michael walsh/music: j.c.lombardo ]
She borders the pavement
Flanks avenues
Parades pass white glove attended by
My mother the war
She'll raise a shaft
Lift a banner
Toss a rose
My mother the war
She's made every effort
To salvage the few
Bought fourteen liberty bonds
My mother the war
Mother the war
She knows every neighbor
Chats at their doors
Compare econosize electric appliances
My mother the war
Share tea and a seat
By my cradle with
My mother the war
Mother the war
Caressing the globe
Touch on his isle
She wrings hands in pensive waiting
My mother the war
Haunts her doorway
Begs her postman
Is there word for
My mother the war
Momentos of distant vigil
Three years each tour
"hands of god enfold him" prayed
My mother the war
Mother the war
In bitter defiance
She's spitting the corps
She's wet a brood short league for combat
My mother the war
Well acquainted with sorrow
Left millions in grief
My mother the war
Fold
Laced
Carrion
Blood
Soaked
Robes
Mother the war
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5. _ Anthem For Doomed Youth
[ music: john lombardo/lyric: john lombardo adapts wilfred owen ]
For whom the bells toll
When sentenced to die
The stuttering rifles
Will stifle the cry
The monstrous anger
The fear's rapid rattle
A desert inferno
Kids dying like cattle
Don't tell me
We're not prepared
I've seen today's marine
He's eighteen and he's eager
He can be quite mean
No mock'ries for them
No prayers or bells
The demented choirs
The wailing of shells
The boys holding candles
On untraveled roads
The fear spreads like fire
As shrapnel explodes
I think it's wrong
To conscript our youth
Against their will
When plenty of our citizenry
Really like to kill
What sign posts will lead
To armageddon's fires
What bugles will call them
From crowded grey shires
The women sit quiet
With death on their minds
A slow dusk descending
The drawing of blinds
Make the hunters all line up
It's their idea of fun
And let those be forgiven
Who never owned a gun
Was it him or me
Or the wailing of the dead
The laughing soldiers
Cast their lots
And you can cut the dread
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6. _ Orange
[ music: john lombardo/lyric: natalie merchant ]
Lineage closed
Dissolved
In its birth
Tragedy
Prelude a balance
Is a synergy
Of reason
Malicious hope
As techno atrocities
Lapse their effects
Associate these ends
Their clarity
Demands your revenge
Please compensate
Not deny
Jungle revenge
Infanticide
Crosses
Very thin walls
Latent casualties
Arrive
From fatal initiation
No longer recessive
Genetic aliens abandoned
Plain deceit
In the mirage of
A just one time cause
We'd all changed
The clocks
No ladies auxiliary to kiss
Their blistered cheeks
Gone
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7. _ Planned Obsolescence
[ music: dennis drew/lyric: natalie merchant ]
Science
Is truth for life
Watch religion fall obsolete
Science
Will be truth for life
Technology as nature
Science
Truth for life
In fortran tongue the
Answer
With wealth and prominence
Man so near perfection
Possession
It's an absence of interim
Secure no demurrer
Defense against divine
Defense against his true
Image
Human conflict number five
Discovery
Dissolved all illusion
Mystery
Destroyed with conclusion
And illusion never restored
Any modern man can see
That religion is
Obsolete
Piety
Obsolete
Ritual
Obsolete
Martyrdom
Obsolete
Prophetic vision
Obsolete
Mysticism
Obsolete
Commitment
Obsolete
Sacrament
Obsolete
Revelation
Obsolete
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8. _ Tension
[ music: john lombardo/lyric: natalie merchant ]
Frail hinges pivot
On a cases door
Commemorative
Souvenirs from places
Containers change
With each occasion
Cellophane encased
Displaying paper
Certificate
Credit years of service
A tool of
Central enterprises
The early hope
For permanence the
Words the rings
Consistency
And social security the
Miracles high tragedy
A thought mistaken
For a memory
Clear the dust from
Smiles in boxes
Cross a patterned floor
Recall the voices
Local posts they
List your friends
In order of
Disappearance
Lawn scattered tins
Feed birds the
Portion baked for
Absent guests
Mass edition icon
God sent comfort is
Your salvation
But who grants
Absolution for sins
That never were committed
Tension
Makes a tangle
Of each thought becomes
Inconvenience
Sound never penetrate
As servile edges
Break and faint
Dress lenghts
Assassinations
Fractured family ties
Christenings
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9. _ Death Of Manolete
[ lyrics: natalie merchant/music: j.c. lombardo ]
There were women holding rosaries
On the day manolete died
Teenage girls in soft white dresses
Standing silent peace respecting
Groups of boys held in their hands
The fragments of a shattered idol
The old men with their traditions challenged
Refrained from tears
Neck neck hook
Poles of wood
The picadores stood eyes ablaze
To view brutal contest
In the vale of years
Courage unfailing
Agility exhausted
Youth entered challenge
Reached for title shelved
Patrons in attendance
To disarm a common myth
Homage played to the victor of immortality
Cloaked in bold tones
In the stockyard the beasts
Did climb their barriers
Bid by a frenzied ring
Bred for one purpose only
To die in man's sport
Dash against his spindle
An instant fell to wounding
On the day
Swords penetrating
On the day
Torches igniting
On the day
Flower wreaths encircling
The day
On the day
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10. _ Katrina's Fair
[ lyrics: natalie merchant/music: robert buck ]
Greta's cedar hope chest
Is full of pamphlets
Glass shelves of romantic vignettes
A journal laced with sedimentary prose
Norma gathers and collects vintage photoplays
Hair combs valentines
Lillian allows the animals to scratch
Leather crack
Mail collect in the box coatings peel
Agnes veiled cathedral dweller
Smiles with benevolent pain
It's katrina's fair tuesday morning
As she with caution unlatches the flat door
She alone cascades to the basement
Careful not to spoil her
Calico printed pinafore
Composite traits mannerists
All others dissipate
Margauritte vigilant dwells upon frigid casements
Sarah's thoughts in the velocity
Accusations always pierce and pass
Clara abandons her passions for distastes
Miss lenora p. sinclair
Early for coffee in the pool
"i'm resituating all your words"
Capital
Space
Colon
Paragraph
Sylvia keeps beasts in jars labeled
Kingdom phylum class order family genus species
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11. _ Groove Dub
[ music: john lombardo/lyric: natalie merchant ]
Imitate that soured old song
There is no individuality
Only guises
Shades of
Nonconformity
There is no individuality
Selling vantage points
Low rate
There is no individuality
Questions ancient
No words claimed
Perform motions borrowed
Thoughts following
Ima tima ima tima intima
Dation
Respected
Head-he-go-round-men
Gesture display
Customer
Limits appeal
Media dictates the latest
Role
Totalitarian
Motions borrowed
Selling vantage points
Low rate
For you
Media begged
Suffered
Numbers
Pain
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12. _ Pit Viper
[ lyrics: natalie merchant/music: steve gustafson ]
In the cruel garrison of affection
If worth of lore is true
You know the face of a temptress
Pit viper
A witch or enchantress
Pit viper
With the malign venom of conceit
She tries
Civil men
Conceal fear
Misgivings
When night entreats them
A greater chill sustains
Stains her
Darkness
Shall not inhibit death blow
Know this skin does not restrict her
Tear and shed the coil
Fall of garland leaves
Below the soil
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13. _ National Education Week
[ lyrics: natalie merchant/music: dennis drew ]
Honor salute and speak
To the corner standing flag
Do you remember how the days of school were
Indivisible separate worlds
Compare contrast
These dreams absurd
Placid classroom faces
Breathe in the features
Of a demographics death map trilogy
Children read them well
Not to bury 3 of 4 sons
As the likes of chivalry
Not to take 6 of 30 bills
To manufacture corpus christi
And so you think it can be so serene
History's most intolerable famine
Has clutched our global tranquility
Reaped the lives of children
Maladies collaborate
With cyclic despair
Infanticide clamors to 20 times more
In 4th and 5th worlds
The poor have always been
Beside us
Amid us
Death has always been
As million cease 15 million that's an annual reap
Add divide multiply sum 41 thousand!
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14. _ Poor De Chiciro
[ lombardo/merchant ]
Oh my dear friend
My dear friend giorgio
How has this time breton
Discouraged your liaison with the
Eye styled metaphysical
Incongruous scenarios
Dauntly jaunt about through nostalgic despair
Within childlike renderings
Of a nightmarish recall
"all my images fragments
I've shored upon my ruins
Pictor classicus sum
I am pure"
Step solemn with the
Air of reluctant manes
As rod and hoop shadow children
Scatter through a henna arcade
Figures indentured to a windless landscape
Enduring silence and flame
Da da da
No loyalty to the nonsensical
Scorned their nihilist pageantry
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