1. |
Refuse to Be
01:59
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Refuse to Be
We’ve been reduced by a century of conditioning
We don’t fight for each other
now the road ahead is folding in
‘36 in replay, a grown garden of instability
Muted tongues press for silence
But I’m still screaming for change
I refuse to be another victim of a world
unthinking and unfeeling
Chained by a lack of vulnerability
Suffocating under blankets of war and force
I deny, refuse, deny, refuse
while I strive for the hope that is left within me
I’m taking back my humanity
I will not surrender my human fate
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2. |
Collecting Losses
02:50
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It’s nine o’ one or nine o’ three and I’m just between
Eye’s shifting gate to gate, I can’t see it any other way
Truth and time press imminent, the radio plays on
a mother sings that song and we all just move right on
Unsee despair, educated in the violence here
to shun the beauty for what’s obscene
With hands cupped at the empty well
begging for a drink to drown this out
Those days were stolen, misshapen
and made faithful to their hand
And we lost the words to reject the myth that we lost
Kids stumble on like second story shells
with broken windows and halls burned out
Taking one last look at what we knew before it
Our lives burning bright like lanterns pressed against the night
at each memorial, histories tied on the fence line.
But if it’s hate you’ve come to know
you won’t know the difference
if it’s fear you’ve come to know you
won’t know what shaped it
We’ll go back to work and collect our losses
and what we’re dying for, we’ll never know
Decades of conflict and dominance in a charade without cause
we needed some fucking answers
We’re just a song
We’re just a speech
We’re just a heart away
We can’t connect to the loss so we all move on
The war goes on.
We all hold on.
The world moved on.
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3. |
What's Left to Learn
02:28
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We are in the fight of our lives now
With no recourse for our love of the land
So with a pen in my hand, I’ll sharpen words into weapons
If it means I can stand for something real
I’m not concerned with empty moments
If we only posture til the end of this song
Anna’s voice sings through Chechen fog
Greater than gun and bomb from ‘94 and on
A lesson defined in spirit:
that one light can spark our human cause
We must claim the right to grow
and stand to oppose all those who hold the throne
And to those who came through the door to pay, leave, and lose
Trailing off among tree-dark streets in the neon-dim hold
To them I say:
“I know that truth is the enemy of power
spoken by those who took a bullet for their efforts
Safety is the convenient path chosen when there’s too much at stake.”
And he says:
“I hear the floorboards creaking. The key turns in the lock.
They’ll tap the door and barge in.
I lived my life to know free will. Printed words scatter floorboards.
They can’t just steal that from me.”
listen to: Trial
Read: more
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4. |
Lasting Efforts
03:34
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Don’t let them in.
You’ll know what’s in your heart and head
the foundation by which you’ll stand
So build the platform, take a chance and be willing to look ahead
Are we the first to act and the last to run
when the flood comes pouring in?
Holding on in parking lots where our hearts met the flame
Every crack in the sidewalk just a garden for the flowers to bloom
It’s not a novelty or some stolen page
to tear up when your legs outgrow the pace
It’s that commitment to the road less traveled
I’m going to stand by every word
I’m going to learn to reverse the hurt
I won’t stop until every last effort is earned
We will take the hardest roads
Through the worst we’ve come to know
And won’t stop until a lasting effort is earned.
I saw it in the twilight like a bike tucked against a tree
Forgotten and commonplace in passing like a weed
And I turned to my old man to say: I love this place
but my mind is mine today.
I put my heart into a love that heals
so could walk this on my own- the road less traveled.
I’ll be the last to run. I’m fucking done hiding from this.
I’ll be there after all the goodbyes.
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5. |
No Action Taken
03:12
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Show me what is left now that we’ve lost a light we may never regain
Nothing more than a face pressed in cement
like gum stuck and made permanent
When we speak:
it’s an unsung chorus of “what a shames” on repeat
like a broken record, yet in a way I miss those days
But with sneering eyes and tired legs, we’re circling the dead man
Some to point, laugh, or deny he’s human.
Were you there? Did you ignore it, or just not feel it
‘cause he didn’t look like you?
and I know our hardest miles lay ahead.
I aim to see it through
I only need to know what was hidden in all we left unspoken,
We need to just admit that those mills are not coming back
A boy in search of word or wisdom can only move forward so
I dropped the brick in hand and watched the foundation cave in
I put my focus on the long years ahead
I won’t drive off, chained by the silence
It’s up to us to-
Free our hearts from persuasion.
Free our thinking from the dull cut of time.
Extend our minds to erase the divide and
discard distractions that conquer and blind.
We have all been so blind.
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6. |
Parting Statements
02:56
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I want to be here in the morning
to walk with you where the train goes slow
But those boards now mark the windows, so we can’t go.
Hollowed eyes conceal hollowed minds
and there’s no redemption at the end of the line
so we’re left speechless with hands tied behind
what is wasted in your head
I refuse with all I am to let you leave your mark on stained pavement
You got the best of us again
The future stolen from our hands
With no concern for all the lives you’ve taken
Or time that’s running out
We’re losing out
The show goes on, dangling your pulled strings.
Columbine like a mural, a parting statement on the stairway.
You rip life away. You rip homes away. You rip families away.
Another school yard laid to waste
to remind mothers their sons are ruined
tainted, indoctrinated to believe in some twisted version of a 50s western,
puppeted off in a hail of bullets, prophesied by a televised hell
that laughed and lied of the worst of our reality.
We stumble and break.
You don’t get to change who we are.
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7. |
Waking Hours
02:30
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Everything is for sale if you can’t see the difference
between hell and your free will
Ambition died when decadence walked in
and shuffled your old man into decades lost
And the radio hollowed out the sound of piss soaked city streets
Like a paralyzed dove on the end of a breaking fist
To leave us wondering how we get there with arms all marked up
In stride down the center line, collapsed in a frame of what once lived
Ten years prior a young mother’s colors taint bone
while the world grew tired of trying.
we want to see you come back to life ‘cause you’re never yourself
until you discard what holds you hostage behind the eyes
We are losing a war that we never tried to win
Fuck what you learned about what it takes to find peace
Another shell finds your head as your knees bend to your neck
A servitude that uproots you, so you’ll die as you lived:
Unnerved and grey, a slave to convictions erased
Reclaim your soul from the claws around your throat.
I remain defiant in every step I take.
I remain unbroken through daybreak’s dawn
To live with dignity and bow out with grace.
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8. |
Trying Our Souls
02:03
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I remember every unlearned sermon
It’s hard to imagine a child once wandered in these shoes
Only to come home and look like someone you used to know
Banging the drums to words I misread
Captaining a ship I don’t want to steer
Clearing the decks, naked in the ugliness in my wayward ways
On distant shores, I was humbled by all the faces
deep in the heart of places you may never know
Will you ever know?
I have to believe that there is something
common to all of us in all this suffering
Humility means more to me
even if there’s no door to tie our tried souls
Don’t tell me I’ll never understand
I have to believe.
I took an oath to remain entranced by the beauty
I have to believe
that there’s more than waves crashing between us
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9. |
Burning on the Doorstep
01:04
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What am I to say?
What do we hold so dearly?
Is it the paths we’re given
That shape the light we hold?
We ache for words less hollow. I am here today.
This still shakes me right to the bone
We lived to hold each other up
We lived for words scratched in blood
To care, to learn, to fight for our true love
We are the orphans of the world, burning on the doorstep
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10. |
Rupture
02:50
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We waste our daylight locked in a cell
Dwelling on “what could have beens”
While the pretty moments glide right by
In this room with all this time to think
The sun dims on a wick made of shame
this was not enough.
I can’t hold on to the anger
It’s the price we pay to move on.
Lost in a prison our weight holds.
Unrelenting; but I move on
Farmhouse swings and spring rains on the pavement:
Your fleeting moment of relief when it’s you and the mistake you made
you’re just like me- It’s the untold things we miss when we go astray
one glaring truth remains: we didn’t learn a fucking thing.
head against the wheel, cathedral glass held the sway
the world lost its wings like a butterfly mid-flight swallowed by the flame
Ten seconds to trade a lifetime away.
Now you bow to the wall and wait but the bars won’t bend
How could you free your sister’s love?
God is a silent stretch of road.
I can’t hold on to the anger
It’s the price we pay to move on
We’ll have to fight this on our own
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11. |
Whatever it Takes
04:21
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I intend to live this life with you until the final march under sinking suns,
where there’ll always be one more bridge to cross
So let’s take it back, restart the reel, rekindle a faith in pretty voices
The ones who taught us how to live unchained and willing
With those words on our tongues as we face erasure
How much further should we walk til we reclaim a world at stake?
I’d take my life to the woods if I could unsee:
This disconnection, war, abuse, and fear
For the albatross clipped in wing
Who gained his stride but lost the vision
We lose, we gain, we suffer, just to die incomplete
Our mothers and fathers worked til the years broke them.
We watched the homes burn up when the factories closed
and mourned our friends who died for nothing.
When the world pries the will from the hands of the last good man,
we lose everything. We’re losing everything.
I still feel, I still hope
in every effort to find a lasting peace
I still sing:
I’ll do whatever it takes to be free.
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Crafter
Hardcore from Massachusetts
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