Helicopters - Live Rochester, NY 3-3-04

This is where the helicopters came to take me away
This is where the children used to play

This is only half a mile away from the attack
This is where my life changed in a day,
And then it changed back
Buried in the din of rotor noise and close explosions
I do my best to synthesize the sounds and my emotions
This is where the allies bombed the school,
They say by mistake
Here nobody takes me for a fool, just for a fake
Later at the hotel bar, the journalists are waiting
I hurry back to my guitar while they're commiserating

And I'll be leaving soon
I'll be leaving soon

Just as soon as we were on the ground
We were back in the jet
Just another three-day foreign tour we'd never forget
It's hard to sympathize with all this devastation
Hopping round from site to site like tourists on vacation

And I'll be leaving soon
I'll be leaving soon

I can't help anyone 'cause everyone's so cold
Everyone's so skeptical of everything they're told
And even I get sick of needing to be sold

Though it's only half a month away, the media's gone
An entertaining scandal broke today, but I can't move on
I'm haunted by a story and I do my best to tell it
Can't even give this stuff away, why would I sell it?
Everybody's pointing while at me they point a finger
A world that loves its irony must hate the protest singer

So I'll be leaving soon
I'll be leaving soon
I'll be leaving soon
I'll be leaving soon