The Barricade

When all the roads you see from your door

Lead one way in the other way

And all the waves that crash on your shore

Carry sailor’s bones from shipwrecked days

When all those vicious, handcuffed words

Constrict, contract, constrain

I’ll meet you on the barricade

In the cool defiant rain

When you and your brothers held onto your mothers

Your story an unwritten page

Well they read you the rules and they sent you to school

But she paid for the bars on your cage

You played a poison violin

In a symphony of rage

Now it’s time you traded that fucker in

For a place on the barricade

In or out

Shrug or shout

The second’s the jury, the minute’s the judge

In the hour of the barricade

Your green eyes and your battle cries

Are the sweetest warning served

But the only ring can dismantle this thing

Is the sound of a siren heard

By the children of apostasy who will rescue this wretched world

And join their hands like a barricade

Like an insolent fist full of pearls

Stay or go

Now or no

The week is the hangman, the month is the rope

In the year of the barricade

Some vote with their heads, some vote with their hearts

Some vote with the end of their dicks

You can vote with a ballot, you can vote with your wallet

But it’s always a vote for the pricks

So let me tell you this for free

My next vote’s with a brick

Ah, from somewhere behind the barricade

Beyond the lies and the rhetoric

If I see you on the barricade

I’ll be sure to shake your hand

And I’ll help you build your barricade

On the grave of this sleepwalking land