Memento Mori

The fans were whirlin'

Like the blades of a 'copter

Liftin' into the skies above some foreign land

Soaked with the bodies of so many friends.

Johnny waved

He was on his way home

He waved goodbye to his comrades in arms,

And all the twisted things he'd seen.

He waved goodbye

And the blades hit

Something

Maybe just fate, but the blades hit

The 'copter went up in flames

And johnny never went marchin' home

Johnny never went marchin' home

They took his name

And they carved it on a slab of marble

With several thousand other names

All the fallen idols

The apples of their mother's eye

Just another name

Meanwhile

Back on that burning shore

Johnny's comrades stood speechless

They looked with uh-uh-uh-uh disbelieving eyes

As those bits of metal and the embers

The embers of his eyes

Fanned out into the air

Black dust

Flames

Oh johnny! some day they'll make a movie about you

And in the making of that movie

Some mad apocalypse

It will become even stranger than the simple act

Just a boy going up up up

Just a boy going up

In flames in the smoke

Just another life

Just another breath

And who'll remember

Oh eternity now

As eternal as a sheet of marble

Eternal as a slab on a green hill

And your name

And all your fallen brothers

And all the ones not cut

All the ones remembered only in the hearts

A mother a father a brother a sister a lover a son a daughter

Shall not shall not fade shall not fade

Your ancestors salute you

And the gods of your ancestors salute you

Having having been formed by the minds of your ancestors

The gods of your ancestors salute you

Having been formed by your ancestors

The gods of your ancestors salute you

They draw you in they draw you through

They draw they draw you through that golden door

Mornin' boy [come on in boy]

We remember you

We conceived of you

We conceived of your breath

We conceived of the whole human race

And we conceived it to be a beautiful thing

Like a tulip bending in the wind

Sometimes it comes back to us

In the form of a handful of dust

Comes back in the form of a smitten child

Our raped daughters, ah the broken bones

Souls cleaved from hearts

They come back to us

And our hands are filled with their rotting tissues

But we turn not our backs

We press our lips

Into their cancer into the dust into the remains of each one

And that love is there and will greet you, will greet you

Mornin' boy [come on in boy]

It's eternal love

Well here, go ahead, run through that flame

Awww man, running through your mind

You took a cat, you took a life, you took it by the tail

And you swirled it around your head

And you thrashed it, you smashed the life out of it

And you knew that it would be your own

But you wanted to feel, you wanted to feel it die

Because you know you would feel your own

You would feel your own

But you're remembered!

You're remembered!

You're remembered dead!

You're remembered dead!

You're remembered dead!

We remember

We remember

We remember

Everything

Everything