I wish I could have been there
On the curb with some courage,
Like a comic book hero
Or the local kid gone good.
She was someone I once knew
Ten years ago at public school,
He thought his fist was eloquent
But it was just the opposite.
It was the monkey wrench in the printing press
That broke her jaw and stole her sense
Of safety and faith in humanity
And replaced it with violence and tragedy.
How could he bear to live with this?
She was the mother of his kids,
And couldn’t bear to lose them
For anything in the world.

So fuck all this whiny emo shit.
We can’t talk of pain, we don’t know what it is.
We’ve never been there.
We’ve never been hit.

Our ability for atrocity
Outstrips our best attempts to speak
Of the ugly things that go bump in the night—
We are the ugly things, let’s get it right.
Four out of ten is conservative,
As far as I can tell it is,
For I knew Jen and Jesse and Jane,
And none of them were ever the same.
Late at night on some quiet road,
All alone after the show,
One was the law meant to defend,
Another was a cousin, a coach or a friend.
And twelve years old outside the mall—
I can’t think of any further to fall
For a people or race consumed with hate
Than to prey on ourselves in this heinous way.

It just doesn’t make sense,
What we give is not what we get.
I dream in ideology,
I’d settle for justice for Kate.

Out of the desert where no water drinks,
Tonight I feel the breeze on the breath of the Sphinx,
There’s a puzzle yet to this human race,
It runs down my cheek in my disgrace.
And in my mind there’s a plane on fire,
It’s circling up higher and higher,
The drops of oil scatter in the wind,
It looks like heaven is raining sin.
Tonight I’m heavy with remembered dreams,
We were very young and how strange that seems,
I promised myself to the end of the sky,
I’d keep you safe now a liar am I.
I haven’t seen you in a decade or more,
Your road has been long and you’re hot and you’re sore.
If music could be a cool wet cloth,
I’d cover your eyes and turn this off.

The heat from the sun you’ve had to face,
And the lines in your skin that won’t erase.
Like dunes in the desert you left behind,
I leave this oasis for you to find.

I give you this Kate 'cause it’s all I have,
And it makes no difference my getting mad.
And even if I could get even with him,
I’d trade it just to see you smile again.