The Long Arm of the Law

Well the long arm of the law first reached out to me when I was just sixteen
Said "why you loiterin around here, boy?
You're lookin all suspicious with them shifty brown eyes, wild hair
A coloured person in this suburb's a surprise
Well you'd best move along before someone gets the wrong idea
The council flats are two blocks that way, better run the whole way"
I told him I don't need no council flats
The Ministry of Housing's got my back with something slightly less dilapidated
Antiquated heater spitting poison right into our lungs
Yeah, carbon monoxide's always been my kind of high

I don't mean to complain
All I'm saying is with the way in which we're living, may as well be laying in a grave
We live and breathe in spaces smaller than the mausoleums
Housing corpses of our lords and masters born with more than
We should even consider being allowed to own
They sold us a tomb so we made it a home
Every skyscraper's a headstone, don't you know?
It's for every worker coerced, fingers grinded to the bone
It's for the people building towers for a minimum wage
Selling labour for crumbs in an uneven exchange
It's for the peasants who were bred to spend their lives inside a cage
Every prisoner locked up for petty crime and made into a slave
The long arm of the law, it's always reaching out for more
With a finger on the trigger of a standard issue just outside your door

We're lighting flames just praying something's gonna catch
We're setting boots to asphalt, stopping cities
All to show them that they've met their match
And through the sprays that fill the noses that we pay them through
The view of a solution is obscured and bruised, black and blue
Reminiscent of our skin as rubber bullets bounce off arms and chests
No second guesses, no, we're never gonna rest
Till the long arm of the law is disembodied, broken, bleeding
Until it's not a crime to find somewhere that's safe to sleep
But the battle drags on, and drags on, and drags on, and drags on
We burn their flags on the street, we have no option but attack
In a world where there's more vacant homes than homeless people
Millions dying of hunger while the dumpsters hold enough to feed them
There's entertainers getting paid to stuff their faces with a meal
That could feed families of ten or so, but that's just not the way it goes
Sit and watch while the dumpster overflows

I feel this overwhelming sickness being a witness
To just how this system victimises people who just need assistance
Vilification of the hungry and the weak as greedy ticks that need eradicating
No use in elaborating on why they're there in the first place
Who imposed the social stigmas based in gender, class and race
Why are there kids being electrocuted to cleanse their sexuality?
Why are sex workers' accounts being frozen, why are they in jeopardy?
Why are brown people in cages hunger striking on Manus?
I need some answers, goddammit
I'm gagging on madness being jammed down my throat
All I get is silent stares as fanfares declare the end of what we hold dear
And I'm pretty fucking scared