This Could Be Anywhere

Cold concrete apartments

Rise up from wet black asphalt

Below them a few carcasses

Of the long gone age of privacy

It takes a scary kind of illness

To design a place like this for pay

Downtown's an endless generic mall

Of video games and fast food chains

One by one

The little houses are bricked up and condemned

A subtle hint to move

Before the rats move in

This could be anywhere

This could be everywhere

Those new kids at school seem cool

But dad says not to talk to them

Stick to your old friends

They're not our kind

So now there's lots of fights

So many people I know

Come of age tense and bitter-eyed

Can't create so they just destroy

C'mon!

Let's set someone's dog on fire

Empty plastic

Culture slum suburbia

Is a war zone now

Sprouting the kinds of gangs

We thought we'd left behind

This could be anywhere

This could be everywhere

Kids at school are taking sides

Along color and uniform lines

My dad's gone and bought a gun

He says he's fed up

With crime in this town

This could be anywhere

This could be everywhere

This could be anywhere

This could be everywhere

Anywhere

Everywhere

I hope I'm gone before it explodes

I linger late at night

Waiting for the bus

No amount of neon jazz

Could hide the oozing vibes of death

My dad's a vigilante now

He's bringing home these weird-ass friends

Like the guy who fires blanks at his TV

When Kojak's on

Or the guy who shows off his submachine gun

To his sixteen-year-old daughter's friends

Whose sense of pride and hope

Is being in the police reserve

This could be anywhere

This could be everywhere-Everywhere