Kevin Devine

Another Bag of Bones

It's a brushfire spreading, feeding as it moves
It's a disappeared glacier, it's an airborne flu
It's your disbelieving eyes locked in concrete miles
It's your yawning conscious and your lawyer's smile
It's an occupied country, foaming at the mouth
No smoking gun, no mushroom cloud
It's a military mother with a boy in hell
And it's a flag draped casket down an oil well
It's an Argentina school girl, gagged and bound
It's a torture camp, it's a long way down
It's the constant brace and shock of now
It's the whole damn world turned inside out, all right

It's a march to extinction with your god in step
It's his name in your mouth, it's his cross on your neck
It's a farm boy sprinting over desert dirt
And he's panting the 'Our Father' in staccato spurts
now that's his automatic rifle and it tells no lies
That's his truth in your stomach, it's no alibi
But the trouble lies on the other side

With an equal truth prepping for his holy night
He sees his crescent and the star in the virgin sky
He hears the call of milk and honey from the afterlife
And as he eases to the check point, he is calm and sure
It's collateral damage, it's the cost of war

It's another bag of bones for the gods to sort
It's just another bag of bones for the gods to sort

It's the species disappearing, all the birds fly south
In a January heat wave and a pulsing crowd
It's an African militia, kids with sub machines
It's a conflict diamond on your bride to be
It's the dispossessed lining up every gate
It's the facts worth facing, faced way too late
It's the mission of modernity, go get what's yours'
'Til there's nothing leftover to get no more
And it's not what were owed but it's what we've earned
And it's closer than we realized that it's time now, to burn

It's time now to burn
Oh, it's time now to burn