Yes Sir, I Will

The door stands open

Across lines, invisible hands are held, golden streamers building in the night

Alone, the possibilities are enormous

Step outside and parasites, deprived of their meat, wait to suck on tiring flesh

Unending statistics that fatten leaders, prisoners of their morality

Afraid of death, we can not save ourselves

To breathe is not enough

Yes sir, I Will

When you woke this morning you looked so rocky-eyed

Blue and white normally, but strange ringed like that in black

It doesn't get much better, your voice can get just ripped up shouting in vain

Maybe someone hears what you say, but you're still on your own at night

You've got to make such a noise to understand the silence

Screaming like a jackass, ringing ears so you can't hear the silence

Even when it's there. Like the wind seen from the window

Seeing it but not being touched by it

Words sometimes don't seem to mean much

Of anyone we've used more that most

Feelings from the heart that have been distorted and mocked

Thrown around in the spectacle, the grand social circus

Up against the rows of grey robots who control our lives

The things we have to offer sometimes seem so frail

As they plan destruction and gain respectability

We offer our creativity and are made outcasts

We didn't expect to find ourselves playing this part

We were concerned with ideas, not rock and roll

But we can't avoid that arena

It's become a part of us even if we don't understand it

In attempts to moderate they ask why we don't write love songs

What is it that we sing then?

Our love of life is total, everything we do is an expression of that

Everything that we write is a love song

We look for alternatives

But the enormous power of the media makes it so difficult

To establish foundations. Their lies and distortions are so extreme

That everything becomes poisoned and corrupted

We can become media personalities, but it is always on their terms

We're tired of living up to other people's expectations when our own are so much higher

Intelligence seems so easily dismissed when it doesn't conform to mainstream values

Lennon said "They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool"

He was right. Social intelligence merely requires agreement and compromise

The boundaries are becoming narrower as the State becomes more paranoid

Under authoritarian rule, conformity becomes the only security

Fear is a powerful weapon against human development

Cowering in our temples of self there's little chance of change

The State is aware of that. The bomb serves many functions

If fear of the omnipotent God is no more

The nuclear Father will govern with his shepherd's crook

Drawing his flock closer to the valley of the shadow of death

Those of us who stand out against the status quo

Do so against all odds

We cling so closely together

Because we have little other than ourselves

Critics say that it's just punk rock or that we're just naive anarchists

They hope to discredit us with their labels and definitions

Throughout history societies have condemned those who are later celebrated as heroes

In so many bourgeois homes Van Gogh's sunflowers radiate from the walls

Yet he lived in utter misery, condemned by those very same people

Why is it that the kind and gentle are subjected to violence and riducule?

How is it that the small and mealy-minded have gained so much power?

What perversion has taken place that we are governed by fools?

We've had problems from self-appointed Gods from Bishops to MPs

They've tried to ban our records saying that we're a threat to decent society

Fuck them. I hope we are

What kind of depraved idiot thinks they can silence others by denying them their voice?

For fucks sake, who are these lobotomists?

As if walls only had one side

Whispered intimacies might not get through

But cries of anguish know no barriers

But how long do we shout for?

Denied the airwaves, we trust in the wind to carry what we say

But sometimes we've found ourselves shouting into the wind

When we should have been confiding in each other

It seems so absurd that we are denied the chance of ever being truly free

The terrible inequalities of the peoples of this earth

Make freedom at best a dream, at worst an insulting privilege

What space is there for self-expression and personal development

When over half the world's population is starving?

There are so many things that might have been done

But rooted on this spot in the desire to find solution

There's little to see and feel but the sighing and dying of our world

But for suffering we might have been a part of it rather than apart from it

Making the compromises

Brave fronts, deceitful disguises. What did you know? What did you care?

What did you know? What did you care?

Turning a blind eye to the lies just to keep it all together

But sometimes when I'm alone like this I wonder whether it's worth it

Smiling and socialising

Endless philosophising. What did you know? What did you care?

What did you know? What did you care?

Surface agreements, statements of fact, trying to prove we can do it

But sometimes when I'm alone like this I wonder just who can see through it

Bargains and sacrifices

Cheap tricks, cheaper devices. What did you know? What did you care?

What did you know? What did you care?

Holding the vision, but losing our sight, endlessly searching solution

But sometimes when I'm alone like this I wonder how much it's just institution

What did you know? What did you care?

What did you know? What did you care?

What did you know? What did you care?

What did you know? What did you care?

Anarchy's become another word for 'got 10p to spare?' What did you know? What did you care?

Another way of saying 'I'm O.K., sod you out there'. What did you know? What did you care?

Another token tantrum to cover up the fear. What did you know? What did you care?

Another institution, another cross to bear. What did you know? What did you care?

etc. etc

Anything and everything can be so easily institutionalised

A poor parody of itself. Itself contained by itself

There's no point in just mouthing the words

The token tantrums just aren't enough

Nor is speed and weed and the Positive Creed

Exclusive clubs where the various tribes congratulate each other for doing fuck all

Will achieve nothing but the strengthening of the status quo

Punk has spawned another rock and roll elite

Cheap Rotten Vicious imitations thinking they'll change their world

With dyed hair and predictable gestures. Nouveau wankers

There's a thousand empty stages waiting for their empty performances

A thousand empty faces waiting for their empty stances

How many times must we hear rehashed versions of Feeding of the 5000

By jerks whose only fuck off to the system has been one off the wrist?

It's the Feeding of the 5 Knuckle Shuffle

If there was no government, wouldn't there be chaos

Everybody running round, setting petrol bombs off?

And if there was no police force, tell me what you'd do

If thirty thousand rioters came running after you?

And who would clean the sewers? Who'd mend my television?

Wouldn't people lay about without some supervision?

Who'd drive the fire engines? Who'd fix my video?

If there were no prisons, well, where would robbers go?

And what if I told you to Fxxk Off?

What if there's no army to stop a big invasion?

Who'd clean the bogs and sweep the floors? We'd have all immigration

Who'd pull the pint at the local pub? Where'd I get my fags?

Who'd empty out my dustbins? Would I still get plastic bags?

If there were no hospitals, and no doctors too

If I'd broken both my legs, where would I run to?

If there's no medication, if there were no nurses

Wouldn't people die a lot? And who would drive the hearses?

And what if I told you to Fxxk Off?

If there were no butchers shops, what would people eat?

You'd have everybody starving if they didn't get their meat

If there was no water, what would people drink?

Who'd flush away the you-know-what? But of course MINE never stink

What about the children? Who'd teach them in the schools?

Who'd make the beggers keep in line? Learn them all the rules?

Who's tell us whitewash windows? When to take down doors?

Tell us make a flask of tea and survive the holocaust?

The rock and roll swindler says it's O.K. to plunder

So the pirates set sail to rape any ethnic culture they can plug a mike to

The imperialists rub their hands in glee

As the slave-boy hunts out butt-ends in the garbage cans

Is it any wonder there was such sickening celebration over the Task Force

When so called radicals work hand in hand with the ruling elite?

Yesterday those wily creeps rejected the status quo

Today they smarm and charm passageways to its very heart

Where's the free individual in all that?

Where's the hope and aspiration?

Identities have become corporations

Social egos and media moulds

Scholars of ad-man's dreams. Prescribed futures

Must we all down aspirins and shine beneath borrowed tans?

Are we really so dumb, so cowered into submission

That not only are we prepared to eat shit

We're also prepared to say thanks for the privilege?

Why should we accept servility as a bargain for dignity?

Why should we passively accept death as a bargain for living?

Why accept this robbery of life? Why accept this pillage?

For Christ's sake take up your bed and walk

Let the blind see end the deaf hear

The rights of the individual are dependent upon

You realising your right as an individual

People are so easily deluded into thinking they've instrumented choice

Where in reality they're nothing but passive observers

Passive observers do nothing but passively observe

Passively soak up creativity and say "Wow, that's me!"

Passively soak up destruction and say "Oh no, not us, not me"

There are those who strive for value and meaning

Who search for reason and purpose

Their efforts are negated by the passive observers

They spend days before the T.V. set so burned out

Is it any wonder they've lost all sense of vision and possibility?

What chance does anyone have when all the spaces are filled?

Sipping breakfast teas to the sound of Space Invaders

Television is today's Nuremberg

Bowing to its authority, they become it

I've seen four year old children conforming to media roles

Main-lining the gross theatre that will become their lives

The television has so dampened people's anger

The population is mesmerised by the flickering screen

And the streets, where the politics of reality were once created

Are deserted at night and the rulers sleep secure

They are under no threat as long as the people are sedated

Those who suffer head-aches from excessive intake of electrons are prescribed valium

Or pay for a fix at the pub where men have to piss up the wall

And the stench of urine lasts well into the next pint

Entertainment is designed to gloss over real problems

And very often those who profess dissent only add to the deception

Words are banded about, but always at the whim of the puppeteer

Actionless sloganeering is just another Punch and Judy show

Any information that we receive concerning the real world is carefully controlled

Why else would fiction have such licence?

We are allowed to see endless theatrical deaths

But when the real deaths started on the Falklands

Government censors prevented us from seeing them

We were given the excuse of 'National Security'

By the lying shits who were interested only in saving their political skins

It didn't matter a fuck to them how many died

As long as their popularity ratings didn't suffer

For that reason alone we were shielded from the truth

While the real violence is kept from us

We are exposed to constant pantomimes of death and destruction

Those in power are rightly aware that if we had access to the real facts

We would cease to be simply passive observers

Media coverage of Viet Nam created massive dissent in the U.S.A

Thatcher's government was aware of that when, embarking on the Falkland charade

They refused press cards to anyone who they knew would not support their line

Those who did travel to the Falklands found their reports dramatically cut down

Meanwhile, at home, we were fed fabrications of Britain's 'glorious war'

The truth that is now filtering out paints a very different picture

It's often been said that truth is the first casualty of war

It is, but the same could be said of life

From birth we are threatened and beaten into submission

By family, church, school and state

From then on we're easy game for the powermongers

Like pathetic circus dogs we hunt out praise

Or, when our true nature finds its way to the surface

We hide in the darkness, our tails between our legs

At all costs we are prevented from realising our own potential

We are conditioned into being passive observers

If the ring-master offers war

We have been conditioned to passively accept it

War can only exist through passive acceptance

It is nothing but a demonstration of the weakness of human will

If the clown offered peace

We will have been conditioned to accept that too

But peace can not and will not be maintained through passive acceptance

Peace will require constant demonstrations of personal strength

Constant effort, constant hard work

Reappraisal, consideration and devotion

Which of those qualities were you taught in schoolroom?

Whereas war simply requires the masses as cannon-fodder

Peace requires individuals to realise their own potential

The odds are hopelessly against because the State deliberately destroys human will

Passive observers offer nothing but decay

The flowerbeds need weeding, the roses need cutting back before winter

Freed from sedation, released from bondage

People would demonstrate their own strength

But the powerful elite are aware of this

And already have tabs on those who they regard as subversives

It is easy for them to single out and intimidated us

And easier still for us simply not to bother

It is impossible to gauge the effect that demands for peace may be having

The authorities are skilled at concealing dissatisfaction

For so long people have been saying "No more war"

But for all those demands little has changed

Seeing that the Peace Movement was growing in strength

Thatcher appointed Heseltine as Minister of Defence

One specific part of his job is to discredit CND

Such is the nature of Conservative democraty

As pacifist we are too easily forced back into tokenism

Making hollow gestures against the wheels of the juggernaut

The line is delicate

The spaces have always been created by the gentle and caring

To be later filled by bullies and egotists

We can try to fill those spaces with the strength of our love

Gandhi called it Ahimsa. The Greenham Wowan call it the 'Politics of Whimsy'

But it doesn't end there, neither is it enough

Gandhi played a major role in liberating India from Britain rule

But conditions in India are still appaling for the ordinary people

Limiting Greenham Peace Camp to women only is a sensible political ploy

But if it is a demonstration of sexual exclusivity it is a sham

Aren't we seeking to destroy all forms of exclusivity?

Does our own oppression give us the right to oppress others?

Unless we are prepared to oppose all oppression

We stand guilty of direct contribution to it

The neo-fascist plunder our land

And we must resist them on every level

As outsiders we have few right with which to oppose them

But on our own, together, we seek them

They have their law and those who impose it

We only have ourselves and each other

They have their order and those who impose it

We only have ourselves and each other

It is easy to dismiss those who seek peace as dreamers

But isn't our whole culture built on past dreams?

It is essential that our dreams become a reality

Or there will cease to be one

Harrods boast that it can supply any whim that its wealthy clients might express

Well let them supply me an Exocet missile and a starving Third World child

And I'll tell them the politics of choice

Equality doesn't enter into the ghettos of wealth

Beneath the protective sheath of Thatcher's economy

The right, rich and privileged get even richer

And they, in turn, support her barbaric policies both at home and overseas

The Falklands war cost Britain over sixteen thousand million pounds - in whose pocket?

Throughout the world millions of people are employed making armaments

Don't they realise that it's ordinary people like themselves who'll suffer the effects of their filthy labour?

The wealthy obscene with their obscene wealth

Applaud the carnage from their grandstand

It's as if they were at Ascot laying their bets

Five to one on the Four Horsemen

They believe that money can buy them out of the responsibility

That they have for the world that they bleed dry

They are the true pornographers

The real stylists in human perversion

Rich educated tarts sit dumbly by

Watching their fortunes rise and fall

In the neatly pressed pin-striped trousers of the City

Debutante whores in rich men's castles

The ruling elite with their puppet figurehead

Queen Elizabeth the Second, Regina Virgina

Strut about on the million of bodies

That they have sacrificed to gain their position

Who are these leaders but those who have made violence pay?

Who are they but the inheritors of their ancestors greed and theft?

Their blood stained flags are rags to our future

Tattered remnant of our individual rights

These rulers are common murderers and thieves

But still we bow before them

For how long will the masses be so pathetically manipulated by God, Queen and Country?

For fucks sake where are we in all this?

We're given life yet we court death

For Christ's sake how long? How long, oh Lord, how long?

Still we lay prostrate before a stylised figure on a crucifix

As if the stone fool might be resurrected

We are expected to bargain our lives for his

And join him in the ugliness of perpetual Christian guilt

He hangs there as a remainder of our own subjugation

Let it be known that he alone is Christ

Those who dare emulate him shall suffer thus

Each settlement is spiked with that stupid image

Each conscience nailed to that diet of corruption

Military acts are bathed in those gory tales

Tired Marines, edgy to fuck and sleep, are blessed in his name

Pious virgins in desire kneel in worship before the myth

In anticipation of their own death, they await his coming

Sweet Jesus have mercy on me

Sweet Jesus, they share his agony

Sweet Jesus, they share his misery

Fuck his loaded deity

Over half the world's population is starving

Crucified by the greed of landowners

Helpless against the imbalance of priorities

Practiced by the major powers who, if they wanted to, could help

Every minute of the day millions upon million of pounds

Are spent on the machinery of war

If only a half of that was spent on the machinery of peace

There would be no more starvation on this planet

Yet governments pay no heed to the cries of suffering

They perhaps make token gestures to appease their consciences

But no real improvements are made

Because to ensure control the superpowers need to maintain the imbalance

Natives are slaughtered in their homelands

By governments seeking out new possessions

Most of the wealth of the so called developed nations

Has been gained at the expense of the Third World

From whom natural resources, both mineral and human

Have been unscrupulously exploited

Peoples' pride and dignity is burnt in Napalm

And hand-held flame-throwers

The poor and underprivileged are raped and tormented

By leaders who use their power not to assist, but to oppress

At the wave of a gloved hand

These people can, and do

Send young men to their death

But not before others too have fallen from their bayonets and guns

Such armies are invariably called 'peace keeping forces'

The hypocrisy is as appalling as it is obvious

The wealthy, educated, privileged and secure

Make the lives of those less fortunate a complete misery

Million upon millions of people are dying from malnutrition

Because, to stabilise their economies, governments destroy food rather than giving it to the needy

"Let them eat cake" said Marie Antoinette

As she wiped the calf's blood from her lips

"Proud to be British" said Margaret Thatcher

As she wiped the Falkland's blood from her hands

The ruling elite have no concept of what it is to suffer want

Yet it is they who are directly responsible

In a world where there are people who can't afford a crust of bread

These arrogant scabs drive around in Bentleys and Rolls Royces

Perhaps it amuses them to rub shit into the faces of the poor

But there'll come a time when such overt displays of wealth

Will not be tolerated by the people in the street

In a sane society wealth and possession would not be an asset

A few years ago a politician was on the radio

Saying that no one in the UK suffered from want

Next day I saw an old man pleading for a handful of coal

His wife was dying of cold and he was penniless

Maybe in the morning, as the politician sipped breakfast tea

She lay cold and dead before the empty grate

Every year thousand of people die of hypothermia

Too hungry, too cold, too poor to stay alive

At times of national crisis it's always the poor who suffer

"Back Britain" we're told

As the rich get richer and the poor get poorer

At times of international crisis it's the same story

"Back Britain" we're told

As the rich get richer and the poor get killed

In the event of a nuclear crisis

The rich will retreat to private bunkers with their wealth and possessions

The injustice of inequality is sanctioned by the church

With its tradition of finance from the gentry

The church has always been obliged

To ensure that its flock remains servile

"Repent ye sinners or be devoured in the flames of hell."

Those very same flames that devoured their enemies in countless religious wars

So often the church has marched hand in hand with the military

Casting its blessings upon the writhing bodies of the battlefield

Each stab of bayonet is God's word

Each crash of steel is God's word

Each torn limb and splash of blood is God's word

For he so loved the world he gave our only begotten sons