The Burning City Smoking (Live)

Forty million refugees
With no place on this earth to call their home
One for every aimless graduate
With nothing else to show for it but loans

And those of us who make our mark
Use someone else's blood
Our western stain won't wash away
It won't vanish in the flood

It seeps deeper through each hurricane
And tidal wave and war
Oh, woah, oh, oh, we want everything we see
And once it's gone we just want more

Atlas had those shoulders
We've got Ambien
And Jameson's and blow
To bind us in a bubble

And keep the newsprint nightmare
Distant and remote
But when we wake in guiltiness
And pitch our screaming fits
When the governor strikes up the band
And gags our parted lips

When the worst case shows up
Dressed and dazzling ready for the ball
Oh, woah, oh, oh, but that bubbles bound to burst
And what a tragic way to fall

The tabloids tell us hate the rat
Who strikes those subways closed and put's you out
Forget those fifty hour tunnel weeks
Inhaling steel dust poison through his mouth

Well if he don't deserve a pension
That makes his family feel secure
If we're now so disconnected
It's our reflections we ignore

And if our constant choice is skimming
Past the writing on the wall
Oh, woah, oh, oh, then I'm sad to say we're lost
And I'm embarrassed for us all

So most days I can't put to rest
The burning city smoking in my mind
And I play and pretend
The principles are nothin' more
Than actors runnin' lines

And I stumble through a movie set
Where tortured victims laugh
And embedded journalists
Who juggle knives and daggered glass

While they entertain a mob of heads
Of state and CEO's
Oh, woah, oh, oh, I stagger past anarchist extras
Through saloon doors painted gold

So I turn and I see Uncle Sam
Outside a wardrobe ready for a shoot
So I walk right up and talk to him
I tell him that I'm scared and I'm confused

And while they test the cameras out
And get the lighting right
While the catering fills coffee cups
And carves up apple pie

And while the stylists trim his beard
And straighten those lapels
Oh, woah, oh, oh, I ask his empires
What made him drive us straight to hell?

And as my daydream ends, he stands ashamed
A shocked and shattered shell
But there's never any answer
For my starving tongue to tell

Woah, oh, oh, oh
'Cause the director shouted action
And from offset it's just as well