There were psychopaths on the day shift
And some on the night shift too
So they flew in a fun guest speaker
With a degree from the NYU
We didn't get paid for coming
Coz they said "this is all for you"
But we got to keep our name tags
And a Safeway voucher too
I assumed my place in the belly
Of the serpent snaking home
A four-tyred scale in a radio haze
Passing our prey along
They were raising the flag as a question
Of red, of white, and of blue
As the sky set fire in pinks and reds
And blackened the towers and rooves
We have children behind razor wire
We have women who have grown, shaped with a fear
We have men who swallowed a war
That fed them with hunger
So all that they wanted was more
And you ask, do I love my country?
And I answer: what is love?
Nobody knew the national anthem
In those stifling assembly halls
We just opened and closed our mouths in the hope
That somebody else had the words
And I remember this kid from The Centre
He'd memorised every line
And he'd walk home alone or in a hail of stones
And sticks in the cold street light
We have children behind prison bars
And city towers full of empty beds and baths
We have something that burns on our tongues
The answer we know but the question's eluding us
And you ask, do I love my country?
And I answer: what is love?
What is love? What is love?
We spill into a heat, the kind
That makes the pavements glow
That final cloud, left behind,
A face slid off the bone
Your cigarettes revere you, see?
As you draw each into your mouth
Oh, to be the one you chose
To burn the whole place down
Your shirt, a river from the mountains
Who came to your shoulders to fall
And you bore it with stains and no buttons remained
The collars eroded and torn
The sunlight reveres you, see?
Flames in the waves of your hair
The pavement softens for the souls of your boots
To write you were always here
The desiccated palings of the fences and the lawns
And the crab-like kids in sprinklers
Their mothers withered and gone
Into a place with their heads in their arms
We spill into a heat, the kind
The eucalypts all distrust
Immovable as bones, so white
And buried above the dust
Your cigarettes revere you, see?
As you draw each into your mouth
Oh, to be the one you chose
To burn the whole place down
Unemployed Statesman and I'm seeking State
The devil has my loneliness and I've nothing left to trade
I'm calling from a payphone, a tube of quiet glass
And I've used all the pennies of anyone I've dared to ask
This land is just too big for me
You can drive and drive and drive
And never find a sanctuary
A foot across the dotted lines
Unemployed Statesman and I'm passing through
The kinder strangers take me for the kind of face they never knew
I'm sleeping cold under the stars, with the desert blooms
And the gold beneath the soil asks me "could there be a finer room?"
This land is just too big for me
You can drive and drive and drive
Til you reach a place where, just to show their reverence,
The seas begin to rise
Unemployed Statesman and I'm seeking State
Ozymandias slept some time before the poets raised his stakes
I'm calling from a payphone, a cross-roads in the sand
I may have one last trade to make, and to force the devil's hand
This land is just too big for me
You can drive and drive and drive
And never find a single thing
That did but see you passing by
How We Go
B Side of the Suns
Two Suns Once
Static of Crows
The Lodger
Favourite Dinosaur
Silence in the Library
Iso Haircut
The Orbit of Your Breathing
I Don't Remember the Future
Specks on a Map
Oddities
The Gravestone Carvers
Imaginary Lines
Falling Asleep with the Moon Still On
Lovers' River
Prayers in Glass Houses
The Sea Will Take it From Here
What Kind of Yes?
Long Tall Shadow
Once Was Water
The Sky that Came Before
Party Songs
You Are Here