Bad Religion

[barbarin]

Inner Logic

Inner Logic

Automatons with business suits clinging black boxes,
Sequestering the blueprints of daily life
Contented, free of care, they rejoice in morning ritual
As they file like drone ant colonies to their office in the sky

I don't ask questions, don't promote demonstration,
Don't look for new consensus, don't stray from constitution
If I pierce the complexity I won't find salvation
Just the bald and overt truth of the evil and deception

There is an inner logic, and we're taught to stay far from it
It is simple and elegant, but it's cruel and antithetic
And there's no effort to reveal it

Graduated mentors stroll in marbled brick porticos
In sagacious dialog they despise their average ways
Displaying pomp and discipline, they mold their institution
Where they practice exclusion on the masses every day

Decorated warriors drill harmless kids on pavement
Simulated tyranny under red alert
Protecting the opulent and staging moral standard
They expect redemption of character and self-growth

(No equality, no opportunity, no tolerance for the progressive alternative)

 

[barbarin]

What It Is

What It Is

There's a purpose, There's a goal
There's virtuous, and immoral
There's a reason for all of this
And I don’t know what it is

I am one, and plural too
I accept them but they exclude
I could make sense of all of this
But I don't know what it is

The seeds of inspiration never germinated in my mind
The beacon of awakening is somewhere that I can't find
So I don't know what it is

There's a beginning, and there's an end
There's a climax, some would contend
There's a way to signify this
But I don't know what it is

 

[barbarin]

The Gray Race

The Gray Race

The framework of the world
Is black and white
The infrastructure builders
Flex their might

Turning true emotion
Into digital expression
One by one we all fall down

The gray race shrivels
trapped inside the world it creates
It's black and white

The perpetual destructive
Motion machine
Began to chart a course
Never before seen

Turning raw compassion
Into fields of plus and minus
One by one we all give in

The gray race shrivels
trapped inside the world it creates
It's black and white

I'd swear there were times when I was someone else
A person with determination and knowledge of the self
But you flattened me to rubble and now I see that I'm
Just a faded negative of the image I used to be

And that's our dilemma

 

[barbarin]

Them And Us

Them And Us

Despite that he saw blatant similarity
He struggle to find a distinctive moiety
All he found was vulgar superficiality
But he focused it to sharpness
And shared it with the others
It signified his anger and misery

Them and us
Lobbying determined through a mire of disbelievers
Them and us
Dire perpetuation and incongruous insistence
That there really is a difference
Between them and us

Hate is a simple manifestation
Of the deep-seated self-directed frustration
All it does is promote fear and consternation
It's the inability
To justify the enemy
And it fills us all with trepidation

Them and us
Bending the significance to match a whimsied fable
Them and us
Tumult for the ignorant and purpose for the violence
A focused loose alliance forming
Them and us

I heard him say
We can take them all
(But he didn't know who they were, and he didn't
know who we were. And there wasn't any reason,
or motive, or value, to his story, just allegory, imitation glory,
and a desperate feeble search for a friend)

 

[barbarin]

A Walk

A Walk

I'm going for a walk
Not the after dinner kind
I'm gonna use my hands
And I'm gonna use my mind

And who the hell are you to tell me what to do?
You can't even tie you won haggard shoes
Your closet is a mess, and your backyard's falling down
And I have no grand ideas or intentions of sticking around

I'm gonna build a world
Independent and exempt
All alone I'll be an empire
With no mortgage and no rent

And I don't need to live in your stinking zoo
You can't even feed the animals donated to you
Your storage sheds are ramshackled, flies decorate the walls
And you expect me to die here in this shit-filled tiny stall?
And now I know you're watching! Everything I do
Call me threat to your children call me socially unglued
Call me master of insanity, unable to relate
Call me lazy, bane, and filthy
Call me monstrous reprobate

I'm going for a walk and there's nothing you can do
'Cuz I don't have to live like you

So I'm going for a walk

 

[barbarin]

Parallel

Parallel

Sleeping on a time-bomb, staring in to space
There's an ocean of unpleasantries we are not prepared to face
Sitting on the fence post to watch the storm roll in
And terrified of the damage it will bring when it begins
It will begin

Splintered dreams of unity (our lives are parallel)
So far from reality (our lives are parallel)
Independent trajectories (our lives are parallel)
Separate terms of equality (our lives are parallel)

Our lives are parallel

Is there no redemption? No common good?
Is there nothing we can do for ourselves? Only what we should?

Comes the hard admission of what we don't provide
Goes the insistence on the ways and means that so divide

They so divide

Side by side suffering loneliness (our lives are parallel)
Phony collective progress (our lives are parallel)
Accepting that it's all such a mess (our lives are parallel)
Gesturing without hope of redress (our lives are parallel)

Our lives are parallel

Forging little plays of deception and pain
As we watch our foundation crumble away
Staggering like birds against a hurricane
And trying all the while to stay out of each other's way

Splintered dreams of unity (our lives are parallel)
Independent trajectories (our lives are parallel)
Screaming out for understanding (our lives are parallel)
Turning inward and suffering (our lives are parallel)

 

[barbarin]

Punk Rock Song

Punk Rock Song

Have you been to the desert? Have you walked with the dead?
There's a hundred thousand children being killed for their bread
And the figures don't lie they speak of human disease
But we do what we want and we think what we please

Have you lived the experience? Have you witnessed the plague?
People making babies sometimes just to escape
In this land of competition the compassion is gone
Yet we ignore the needy and we keep pushing on
We keep pushing on...

This is just a punk rock song
Written for the people who can see something's wrong
Like ants in a colony we do our share
But there's so many other fuckin' insects out there
And this is just a punk rock song
(Like workers in a company we do our share
But there's so many other fuckin' robots out there)

Have you visited the quagmire? Have you swam in the shit?
The party conventions and the real politik
The faces always different, the rhetoric the same
But we swallow it all, and we see nothing change
Nothing has changed...

10 million dollars on a losing campaign
20 million starving and writhing in pain
Big strong people unwilling to give
Small in vision and perspective
One in five kids below the poverty line
One population runnin' out of time'

 

[barbarin]

Empty Causes

Empty Causes

Everywhere you looked there was confusion, violence, drama and drugs
So many righteous revolutionaries spouting utopian love
Everyone shrouded in purple haze
Then one day they woke up from their dream state
They found themselves no more at peace than before
Older, meek, and conformed

Empty causes
A bluster for the soul, a fix for the mind
Empty causes
Cling to everything you find

Well, the shots rang out like popcorn and the Chief was hit and rushed out of sight
The mohawk-chain, leather brigade rejoiced maliciously on that night
Someone cried out "fuck the government"
His mates couldn't define what he meant
So no one gave him the time of day
And the scene died away

Empty causes
A war for the body, an army in the mind
Empty causes
Losing steam as time goes by

Could it be that everyone selfishly desires their own personal retinue?
And that causes are just manifestations of too much time and far too little to do

Empty causes
Direction for the soul, conviction for the mind
Empty causes
Cling to everything you find
Empty causes
You've got yours and I've got mine

 

[barbarin]

Nobody Listens

Nobody Listens

Hey mister, don't point at me
You spout rhetoric nonsense like a Pavlovian model
Responding to his questions

Hey teacher, arrogance is bliss
You spend your time turning water into life
As if you were God's foreman

Is it any wonder
Things seem so awry?
The masses are cloaked in confusion?
We don't have to think to survive
So nobody listens

Hey recluse, don't shout at me
You proclaim yourself an expert by extension of the methods
Detailed in your magazines

Hey downer, don't prey on me
We've all got bum raps that torment us day to day
That we hoist on our own shoulders

Is it any wonder
People pass you by?
Your plea for understanding
Is heard as desperate lies?
Nobody listens

I can't help you...

Is it any wonder
Things are so insane?
So many quests for compassion
Are just for someone's personal gain?

So nobody listens to you

 

[barbarin]

Pity The Dead

Pity The Dead

There's a boy in crimson rags with a grimace and a spoon,
and a little sullen girl face-up staring at the moon
And there's no one around to hear their lonesome cries
Then they pass away alone into the night

Why do we pity the dead?
Are you churned by emotion from the voices in your head?
(Are you scared of the logic that swirls within your head?)
Look at all the living and you'll ask yourself why
Oh why do we
Pity the dead?
Pity the dead!

Well, you've seen the disease, suffering and decay,
And you whisper to yourself blissfully "it's okay"
And you still refuse the possibility
That the dead are better off than we

Tell me what you see, tell me what you know
Is there anyone who lives a painless life?
If there is show me so
The destitute and famished, demonic and the banished,
dejected and the ostracized, the brainwashed and the paralyzed,
the conquered and objectified, the few who see the other side
Tell me what you see! It's a mortal, wretched cacophony

In the end you may find there's no guiding subtle light,
no ancestors or friends, no judge of wrong or right
Just eternal silence and dormancy
And a final everlasting peace