Crass
Intro / Rocky Eyes
(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)

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