Wide Awake!

We are conductors of sound, heat and energy
And I bet that you thought you had us figured out from the start
We are conduits of clear electricity
Now you’re back on the pitch to take the apparatus apart

You’re an ancient now
You're an ancient now
You're an ancient now
On your own

Rebels, teachers
Strikers, sweepers
Better protected
Whenever collected

We are troubled by your soft curiosity
But delighted to be anti everything you were taught
Are you put off by our footloose fluidity
Have your hurt caucasian feelings left you so distraught?

Are you quite done now?
Are you quite done now?
Are you quite done now?
Not at all

Workers, authors
Poets, stoppers
Power resembled
If we are assembled

Only through those who stay awake can an institution be dismantled
It is dishonest, nay, a sin to stand for any anthem that attempts to drown out the roar of oppression

Hesse Total Football
Twombly Total Football
Tzara Total Football
Mina Total Football
Panthers Total Football
KoBrA Total Football
Dada Total Football
Beatles Total Football

Swapping parts and roles is not acting but rather emancipation from expectation
Collectivism and autonomy are not mutually exclusive
Those who find discomfort in your goals of liberation will be issued no apology
And fuck Tom Brady!

Violence is the fruit of unreached understanding that flower from the lips of scoundrels
It is a forest so dense and rooted in our past
It tempts us to become lost in its darkness
And stinks like the piss test you were forced to take
Just before you were told that you didn’t meet
The standards of integrity that this organization strives to maintain

Why are there no folk songs about ATM machines
That produce the likeness of the blazer of the trail of tears
Issuing overdraft fees from beyond the grave
Prison TV shows in an endless queue
Containing the robust nourishment of a commissary
This is why we cannot afford to close an open casket
You protect no one by obscuring the mirror that reflect our own problematic reality
Allow me to ponder the role I play
In this pornographic spectacle of black death
At once a solution and a problem

A cause, an effect, a rejoice, a regret
Violence is daily life
A promise a pact that the world never kept
Violence is daily life

A cause, an effect, a rejoice, a regret
Violence is daily life
A promise a pact that the world never kept
Violence is daily life

Violence is daily life
Violence happens every day
It's hard to get used to getting used to violence

Savage is my name because Savage is how I feel
When the radio wakes me up with the words “suspected gunman”
My name is a warning for the acts you are about to witness
Which contain images that some viewers may find disturbing
My name belongs to us all
So if they ask for yours give them mine
My name is a threat

Riot is an unfinished grave that was dug to deposit undepleted anger
Like barrels of uranium leaking into something sacred
It is a word to use to delegitimize your unrest
And to make your resistance into an overreaction

The pink tube of paint called flesh
Used in portraits of chairmen of boards and
Men who clean up streets named after those who fought
For erasing the lives they now claim to protect
What is an up and coming neighborhood and where is it coming from?

A cause, an effect, a rejoice, a regret
Violence is daily life
A promise a pact that the world never kept
Violence is daily life

A cause, an effect, a rejoice, a regret
Violence is daily life
A promise a pact that the world never kept
Violence is daily life

Seldom have I ever questioned the end
Still I grow frost when I'm reminded
Euphemisms on a loop interchanged
Which hands get to turn the final page?
And whose throat belongs the swan song
Crisis warming, denial change

State TV helps the public explain
Broadcast beamed into the dry terrain
Images of trench survival
Without hope but soaked with pain
Consequences of reality felt
All conditions of humanity built
On the bridge's ten villages
Waiting for the state to help

Glass barely bends before it cracks
Embedded down into our path
Paved in the crimson of our tracks
Without the chance of turning back

Before the water gets too high
Before the water gets too high

If the clock strikes midnight then
What becomes of our demonstrations?
To which fate have these gatherings fell
Which walls echo all the chance we held
In two faces on the coins
We tossed into the wishing well?

Drinking water on which we subsist
Mixing into rivers that did not exist
Yesterday when all the warning
Signs were there but sorely missed
What's it worth, all the money we made?
Floating idly in a newborn lake
Far above financial centers
Cities sink like market rates

Glass barely bends before it cracks
Embedded down into our path
Paved in the crimson of our tracks
Without the chance of turning back

Before the water gets too high
Add up the bribes you take
And the time can't be bought
By the profits that you make
Before the water gets too high
To float the powers that be
Or is it someone else's job
Until the rich are refugees

Before the water gets too high
Before the water gets too high
Before the water gets too high
Before the water gets too high

Your glance sings of lyrics 'cite from memory
Its sad our goodbyes sound nostalgic
Your chords swung me from an ol' holler tree
I'm living like a vagabond that just can't decide
When to leave

With roots are in the rhythm to my mind it swings
I found even is impossible to keep
Everyday starting up a balance beam
Still you're steady with me always carrying the melody

Smiling all the while the paint chips off of my mala prayer beads

It's the images, contained – not the lenser frames
Recalled to my mind before I fall asleep
A list of regrets is no place to be
I'm coming in late but I'll never modulate us
To the minor key

Smiling all the while the paint chips off of my Mardi Gras beads

Almost, almost, almost, almost, almost had to start a fight
Don't know, don't know, don't know, don't know how to react so I won't
What do, what do, what do, what do you do when you are provoked?
When does, when does, when does, when does, when does something start being a joke?
Caught up, caught up, caught up, caught up in our morbid modern lives
Adapt, adapt, adapt, adapt to the void then if you must
And to, and to, and to, and to just prefer the status quo
What if, what if, what if, what if I've got tired of being polite?

Why am I searching for reason?
I'm in the chaos dimension
Reasons eclipsed by tension

I want, I want, I want, I want not to feel numb about death
Finding, finding, finding, finding peace is not an easy task
Breathing, breathing, breathing, breathing to see if there's any left
Reading, reading, reading, reading about how many people died and

Can someone tell me the reason?
I'm in the chaos dimension
Trapped in a brutal invention

If it stops I'm, if it stops I'm, if it stops I'm having a bad dream

If it stops I'm, if it stops I'm, if it stops I'm having a bad dream

In and out of patience
I just can't keep it around
Most of mine's been taken
Is there a finite amount?
Had a little love
(But I gave it to you)
Now someone's at my door
(And he needs some too)
Lighting up my phone
(Darkening my mood)
And all I got left is
This shit attitude
At least music is playing in my head

If it stops I'm, if it stops I'm, if it stops I'm having an unshakable nightmare

In and out of patience
Don't have enough to share
Sometimes on life itself
I'm neither here nor there
The MTA
(Took the first of it)
Twenty-minute delay
(Wasn't the worst of it)
Saw it underground
(You could burn to death)
Now you're right on time to take what I got left
Funky music playing in my head

If it stops I'm, if it stops I'm, and if it stops I'm counting on you

I've learned how not to miss the age of tenderness
That I am so lucky to have seen once
And now that I've become older I've how to brush over
My history and how it's sequenced

When I think about you I see a person who
Hasn't existed for a long time
Before you started using, before I starting choosing
To do the same thing for the same reasons

The first name I called you is not a name at all
More of a duty than a function
Often an execution, often with deep confusion of
'Who was I when that name was just mine?'

Like a serpent charmer negotiating harm
I live with a basket of your silence
And as the years record I can feel it growing board
But I keep the top on in the meantime

When I pass my reflection there isn't any question of
Where the person in it came from
When I catch myself thinking and hear the voice that speaks inside
I know where I got my brain from

Every step I've strayed from and followed
Led me to the same location
Every act I've forsake and borrowed
A delivery to now
And I've never wondered how I came to be
I feel free like you promised I'd be

Faced with a decision:
What do I call bullshit?
A contemporary dilemma
Can I allow this?

Normalization, what am I thinking?
Immunization, power conditioning

Nothing is normal
Manipulated into believing
I’m exercising skepticism
Honesty is everything

Normalization, processed reality
Immunization of what goes on

Lately I’ve been curious, wondering
Do I pass the Turing test? Do I think?
I’m not sure I wanna know
Can I accept this?
Better safe than sorry

Normalization, collective witnessing
Immunization of human sympathy
Normalization, prefab experience
Immunization, perceived autonomy

I was biding my time, desperately, I walked the line
Between health and poverty
Looked into a face, all my thoughts they were replaced
I had the nerve to call it soul

Get love where you find it
It's the only fist we have to fight with
And soon, you're headed back to earth

Found myself along a path, trailed all my steps back
Found a place to relearn to relax
Rested like an empty cage and where the moon
Starts everyday
And I can dress up like a saint

Twice I've been around the world and I'm sure
There ain't no one living no more no choice
But to buy all your own time
Spend all your money at the casket store

I'm wide awake
Mind so woke 'cause my brain never pushed the brakes
I'm wide awake
Eyes so open that my vision is as sharp as a blade
I'm wide awake
Movin' and groovin' and I ain't ever losin' the pace
I'm wide awake
Mind so woke 'cause my brain is as sharp as a blade
I'm wide awake
I'm wide awake
I'm wide awake
I'm wide awake
I'm wide awake

I'm wide awake
Mind so woke 'cause my brain never pushed the brakes
I'm wide awake
Eyes so open that my vision is as sharp as a blade
I'm wide awake
Movin' and groovin' and I ain't ever losin' the pace
I'm wide awake
Mind so woke 'cause my brain never pushed the brakes
I'm wide awake
I'm wide awake
I'm wide awake
I'm wide awake
I'm wide awake

Living in proximity of a dollar trying to get ahead of the pack
But you never learned, you never got it did ya?
How to glide past people sleeping on the sidewalk
Dreaming about stepping over something to bite on
Feeling pretty weak and you need something to rely on
Something you can't find in a store

NYC Observation, is it a swan song wildly ahead of itself?
But you never listened to the music did ya?
Talk so loud you don't hear other people's problems
Trying not to look, you're not the person to solve them
"Waste it all on booze", we all need something to revolve on
Something that you can't afford

K2 sales are gaining and they ain't gonna drop, no
Big Boy was the scene of the crime
Fenced unfinished condo beats a pissed soak curb
Yeah, it smells like burning plastic but it comes from a rock
Now shelter curfew is passed, looks like tonight you got locked out
Good a place as any to lay low and stay clocked out
Some things you just can't ignore

Making the distinction between life and lore
Odds favor the former when you wear a mask
Masochism forming in the reflection and
I'm trying not to turn into a psychopath
Better to have lost it then to find it tossed out
That's what I'm telling myself
Wasn't I better than nothing?

Making a decision about steamed or fried
Wanted to be needed so I fed my cat
Think I'll keep to myself for the next few days
Feel a buzz that can't be bottled, smoked or canned
Sabotaging life just to find something to write about
Why was it always this way?
And did I do it on purpose?

Waking from a vision that the schizoid built
Listening to puddles swallow melted snow
Spring has sprung and finally it's not cold outside
And I'm thinking about the places that I want to go
Passion dissipates when it's fastened to
The faces we wear only to become them
Lying to ourselves everyday becomes incredibly easy

Before the grief, I found peace in my selfish ways
My yesterdays were erased
Death will bring change

Before the crash, I revealed in potential untapped
Mortality was not contained
Death will bring change

The bottom of this well is rich with bitter water, it lays still, drowsy, dreaming, and dying to get out

Now I'm anchored but my lines are all tangled
Can't afford to unwind

Before this wreck, I found peace in my health
Now my insides rebel
Death will bring change

We've come to replace your clock's old stubborn hands
We are the answer to why they never had a chance
It was not so long ago that the world was mostly slow
The age of iron, steam and speed
Turned a stroll to a stampede
But we've come to increase time in between ticks
And there is romance in the slow dances because
They're fertile in hush, futile in haste
These are your nerves, this is how they taste

Well I can't count how many times I've been outdone by nihilism
Joined the march that splits an open heart into a schism
I cower at the thought of other people's expectations
And yet still hand over mine to them

Travel where you are, tourism is sin
These are the ruins we left behind, you can't take pictures of them
If what they say is true, then you become what you chew
If it decays spit it out, affectation is a drought
That you wait through when you hate everything that you do
You wanna live outside the groove, then fine
But it's there like a flower blooming in your ear
Open up your mouths, pollinate your peers

Nothing reminds the mind of power like the cheap odor of plastic leaking fumes
We crave, consume, the rush it feels fantastic
But like power turns to mold, like a junkie going cold
I need the fix of a little tenderness