bonesaw-orchestra

part I
A little boy hangs his head in shame
His father won't be back again
There he hangs, a silhouette
9 lives left behind, they will never forget

A town plagued by poverty
Of turmoil and regret
A sunset that never rises
News sensationalizes

And then there is silence.

There should be riots.

Instead there are gangs
Murder and corruption
No protection
High infection
No detection
No direction

They want to keep us illiterate
Silenced, degenerate
They give us the tools to destruction
The aim was assimilation
Manipulation, humiliation
Suffer spiritual starvation
/ part II
Forced to buy
Forced to sell
Forced to go
Through financial hell
All for what? A rich man's dream
Chasing the cars and the girls and the cream

Without a single soul in tact
Once you die, money won't bring you back
And your life well spent was meaningless
And all that debt and stress you had was worthless
Just like the hours you spent, slaving for society
Against an oppositional majority

All for what? To be drowned in formaldehyde
On display in chemicals, set up in a velvet box
To rot in the ground, to feed the worms?

What was it worth?
/part III
Love your life, possessions end up possessing you
What you own oppresses you, if you don't appreciate
Every single sun rise, as sure as time, unable to differentiate
All of the guarded words we say, only now things have changed.

I see through a third lens one more poetic than the rest
Finding meaning in the smell of rain, painting the sidewalk in shades of gray
I see definition in the simple stars, dotting this fishbowl like white grenades
And there is no way that misery pervades, nor will it persuade me
Into thinking or believing life is anything less than spectacular

Despite every single ****ed up and disgusting thing
We, as the pestilence, have brought upon those most vulnerable
All we can do is protect our hearts and help those who need it
In spite of our differences, together we can dream and also achieve it.

- A piece I felt compelled to write after recalling a documentary I watched last summer. The first stanza is based on a First Nations family in a northern Ontario reserve, where the suicide rate may be one of the highest in the world. Basically, the father killed himself, leaving the mother with several children. Eventually, she remarried, and if I recall correctly, she and her new husband committed suicide, leaving behind nine children, some of which witnessed the physical aftermath of the suicides. I've been trying to find the organization who made the documentary, but the title of it has left my memory. I wrote this pretty fast/passionately so excuse some errors.