Lyrics

When I arrived
I was greeted by need
in the face of a child pale and thin.

Doctor, my son's name is Justin
and he's being punished for somebody's sins.

Greed is the culprit
and men are its pawns
in a battle that nobody wins.

They're dying.
We'll save a few,
but most are dying.
They retch and bleed,
but there's the one with the sores.
And some are deaf or blind,
I think I've lost my mind.
So many different kinds
of symptoms
that we don't know where to put 'em all.
Is there an expert that I can call?
Is there a drug that tames this thing?
I can't bear to watch 'em fall.
Just put the bleeders there,
intensive care,
and bandage their wounds.
They were so unprepared,
completely unaware
the water's where
the poison had taken hold.
Instead of healing all
their wounds they made it
worse than it was before.
How much can they endure?

Suicide by profit:
it's all about the money.
Our future has been mortgaged
against our present gluttony.

Madness grips our leaders
and delusion hems them in.
Locked in lust for profit,
they doom us with their sin.
Our climate is unstable
and it fills us all with fear.
They insist it's just a fable
as they close their fiscal year.

It's not a dream.
It's still there when I wake.

I have to look
into their sad and haunted eyes.
I have to hear
their desperate and hungry cries.
I have to breathe
their wretched, foul and fetid air.
I have to taste
their hopelessness and I despair.

I want to see
the joy come back into their eyes.
I long to hear
the music of their happy sighs.
I'd love to breathe
untainted breezes we can share.
I need to taste
the victory of lives repaired.

I have to see it through.
I could be one of you, too.