Thursday Lyric: Stormfront

This is a particularly powerful piece. It's more of a spoken-word verse than a song as such, but the powerful music doesn't hurt. I got the text here, but I heartily recommend the album Sparrow's Wing.

Stormfront
Garnet Rogers

As silent as the voice of God
these empty barren hills
they hover above the dry plain
they shimmer in the distance
I feel a sudden chill
The ground is dry and cracked
like an old mans skin stretched across the plain
Lightning flickering across the thunderhead
Empty promises of rain

Some kind of stormfront on the move tonight
Feel the tension in the air
Dust devils dance on the side of the highway
Leaves and garbage everywhere
Mothers call their kids from the door
"C'mon get inside, shut the windows, lock them tight"
The sun has burned its bridges
plunged into the mountains in a sea of steam
and poison light

Chorus
I hear thunder bumping boxcars in the valley
the wind is laughing up my sleeve
the cars have turned their headlights on
It's way past time-- I should be gone

We've turned our towns into a filthy joke
like a theme park built for swine
We bulldoze farms, fields turn them into strip malls
Nobody seems to mind
Who elected these cheap hustlers anyway?
This worthless pack of pimps and whores
The developers come smiling with their pockets jingling full of change
We get down on all fours

And I don't want your Black Hills gold
Not at any price
we built a trail of tears and broken trees through here
then swarmed the earth like lice
Townhouses, casinos and trailer parks
Cheap neon light up the falling night
I saw the Four Horsemen ride through here about an hour ago
They were sickened at the sight

These highway signs are full of bullet holes
Burnt rubber cross the road
Someone's angry about something somewhere here
They're just waiting to unload
We're putting bombs in buildings
Bombs in letters, bombs in trucks
We're drowning kids in the backs of cars
We're dressing killers in Armani suits
We turn them into TV stars

We become a race of leering voyeurs
We're big on Progress Sex and Death
Something evil is lurking in the darkness here with me
and I can smell its stinking breath
It's in the blankness of our children's stares
It's in a courtroom in a suit
It's in the hand that holds gun that made these bullet holes
It's a secret pocket filled with loot
It's the soft white faces of these soft white men
with their soft white grasping hand
who laugh and sneer at those who have to stand and wait in line
and never got their chance