Birdsong...

Birdsong...

There’s nothing moving in this savage landscape
Just a bleak, lonely, ravaging wind.
It rips at your heart, deciding your fate;
Soul crushed under leaden sky’s without hope,
Shambling through the ashes like a geriatric boxer on the ropes.
Shuffling, stumbling, grumbling mumbling men of straw;
unable or not wanting to prevent the war;
the war that became the war to end all wars.
Our world in ashes and most of us people gone;
Too dumb to differentiate between right and wrong;
Too dumb to save the beautiful birdsong….
What will you do when they knock down your door?
What will you scream when they knock you to the floor?
What will you do about the gangs in the streets?
What will you do when you realise, it’s your kids they’re gonna eat.

How is all this possible, in this day and age? I hear you ask;
Because progress isn’t progress, it’s just a mask;
Just another opportunity to put money in the bank,
For gluttonous corporate marvels to load up their coffers;
Supercilious politicians to take their nice little back handers;
For Danegeld police officers to enjoy their nice little earners;
And narcissistic local counsellors to get their picture in the papers;
Just another golden opportunity for all lifes fakirs.
Our world is in ashes and most of us people gone,
Too dumb to differentiate between right and wrong;
Too dumb to save the beautiful birdsong….
What will you do when they knock down your door?
What will you scream when they knock you to the floor?
What will you do about the gangs in the streets?
What will you do when you realise, it’s your kids they’re gonna eat.

Blinding white lights and a long series of low percussive blasts,
At first over the horizon but then arriving very fast;
The howling winds of change after somebody had thrown the switch.
Our world came and went, and away we went with it,
Lost in the vapour, a nanosecond of red misted shit.
A short, violent, visceral journey, a rapid return to our makers;
Into the blackness, a dark new world without need for movers or shakers.
A bitter, dark, sour, empty, acrid and lonely place;
a world of ashes and most of us people gone.
Too dumb to differentiate between right and wrong;
Too dumb to save the beautiful birdsong….
What will you do when they knock down your door?
What will you scream when they knock you to the floor?
What will you do about the gangs in the streets?
What will you do when you realise, it’s your kids they’re gonna eat.

It’s difficult to know exactly when it started, hard to be specific;
Maybe it was when we’d fished out the whole of the Pacific.
150 tonnes of Tuna caught in a net at any onetime;
very nice with a dob of mayo and a slice a lime.
4 million tonnes a year surely ain’t no joke;
no wonder the living seas are empty and the fishermen broke.
Living in a twisted world where smart is an acronym for dumb,
A world falling back in time, back to using an archaic rule of thumb;
a world of ashes and most of us people gone.
Too dumb to differentiate between right and wrong;
Too dumb to save the beautiful birdsong….
What will you do when they knock down your door?
What will you scream when they knock you to the floor?
What will you do about the gangs in the streets?
What will you do when you realise, it’s your kids they’re gonna eat.

Blackened looters trudge through the ash, scavenging amongst the rubble,
You scurry on by doing your best to avoid any trouble.
Too late they’ve seen you pushing your trolley full of food,
A meal with wheels you’ll help to lighten their mood.
A world where all the Gods have gone into hiding, or died;
a world we were left with because too many politicians lied.
Murderers and cannibals are roaming the scorched and shrouded earth;
a world devoid of pilgrims, light, warmth or mirth.
A world of ashes and most of us people gone.
Too dumb to differentiate between right and wrong;
Too dumb to save the beautiful birdsong….
What will you do when they knock down your door?
What will you scream when they knock you to the floor?
What will you do about the gangs in the streets?
What will you do when you realise, it’s your kids they’re gonna eat.

But where Gods can’t live men will fare no better;
We all need to die only then will things get better.
God has gone but we are still his wandering prophets;
Clinging grimly to worthless gold crosses and photo’s in lockets.
The world is cold and damp and the flames have mostly gone out,
So you hit the road instinct takes you south.
Foraging for food and anything that will keep you warm,
Putting distance between you and the hungry cannibalistic swarm.
Into a world of ashes and most of us people gone.
Too dumb to differentiate between right and wrong;
Too dumb to save the beautiful birdsong….
What will you do when they knock down your door?
What will you scream when they knock you to the floor?
What will you do about the gangs in the streets?
What will you do when you realise, it’s your kids they’re gonna eat.

It’s a long hard road and the constant acid rain that falls,
Stains your pock-marked skin and rots your clothes,
Leaving an all pervading hideous stench of rotting flesh;
Your only bed on this lonely road, a tattered soggy putrid mattress.
Days blend and you never know if tomorrow is on its way,
There is only one constant, the dark dank cumulus grey.
And even if you knew that tomorrow was coming,
You know you’d wake to the sound of no birds humming.
Only a world of ashes and most of us people gone;
Too dumb to differentiate between right and wrong;
Too dumb to save the beautiful birdsong….
What will you do when they knock down your door?
What will you scream when they knock you to the floor?
What will you do about the gangs in the streets?
What will you do when you realise, it’s your kids they’re gonna eat.

Nightmare visions of screaming, kneeling dead bodies melted onto tarmac,
Roasted where they stand, white ribs visible, scorched skin nibbled by rats.
Living off what you can find and existing even worse than tramps,
Sucking the fuel pumps dry to light your dying miners’ lamp.
Still travelling south doing your best to protect your only child,
Telling bedtime stories but still listening for the call of the wild.
Through a land where you’ll never again hear the sound of tolling church bells;
through a world ruled by empty vicious deranged cannibals.
A world of ashes and most of us people gone.
Too dumb to differentiate between right and wrong;
Too dumb to save the beautiful birdsong….
What will you do when they knock down your door?
What will you scream when they knock you to the floor?
What will you do about the gangs in the streets?
What will you do when you realise, it’s your kids they’re gonna eat.

Our Leaders of the free world committed a gross criminal act,
Without asking us and declaring war on undemocratic Iraq.
Next stop Afghanistan and the revolutionary Taliban,
Tripping over the border and sucking in Pakistan.
While pontificating about non-proliferation and nuclear bans;
But that’s only for North Korea and argumentative Iran.
We in the free world have forgotten we always have a choice;
We in the free world have forgotten we have a voice.
While we were sleeping the buttons put the world to sleep,
And we went off into dreams like slumbering digital sheep.
A world of ashes and most of us people are gone.
Too dumb to differentiate between right and wrong;
Too dumb to save the beautiful birdsong….
What will you do when they knock down your door?
What will you scream when they knock you to the floor?
What will you do about the gangs in the streets?
What will you do when you realise, it’s your kids they’re gonna eat.

Tramping south searching urgently for a kind face,
Hoping against hope to win the last frantic desperate race,
Searching for mankind’s remaining hint of beatific grace.
Someone that cares for the fragile human condition;
Prepared to give and take in truly altruistic fashion;
Prepared to strive and endure so that hope becomes fruition;
Prepared to shout and bring a halt to the road to oblivion.
That wants to live but not by the law of the jungle rules;
Not by the laws dreamt up by vacuous political fools.
That can build a new life in this harsh new world,
a world of ashes, where most of us people are gone.
Too dumb to differentiate between right and wrong;
Too dumb to save the beautiful birdsong….
What will you do when they knock down your door?
What will you scream when they knock you to the floor?
What will you do about the gangs in the streets?
What will you do when you realise, it’s your kids they’re gonna eat.


Copyright © DC 2009