Modus VivendiA bright young thing, I went off to make
My way in the affluent set.
We’d have comfort, security, and prestige
And never a moment’s regret.
But cities were burning, Buddhist monks were burning,
Burned babies were the evening news.
By the light of those fires I turned my back on it all
And walked till I had nothing to lose.
I was young, I was righteous, I knew it all;
I left a family without their father.
I closed my heart till I couldn’t feel
My family without their daughter.
But you can’t live forever with that kind of lie,
I knew what I had to do—
Stand naked, unarmed before my whole life
With nothing and everything to lose.
Now in prison I live with the casualties
Of the empty American promise.
I look at their lives as junkies and thieves like a sociologist:
It’s the Post-Industrial Info-Tech Age;
City kids are into guns, sex, and booze.
They shoot their future up their veins
And live like they’ve got nothing to lose.
You took it in with mother’s milk
That the straight life is a fraud.
It’ll steal your soul and everything whole
For sacrifice to its god—
Ambition.
You can’t be bought with flattery
Or the promise of security.
You have an outlaw for a mother.
You think you’ve got nothing to lose.
Maybe we’ve got nothing to lose
But each other,
Nothing to lose but each other. |
