Roses for the Damned - Janis Ian

One too many gone, one too many died

All my heroes have been silenced

All the young men marching off in two-four time

Dance to that righteous killer’s cadence

One too many gone, laying wasted in the sand

Death’s got no feeling for the brave

Crazed men hustling selling guns and ammunition

Bear your rifle, bear your burden, save your children

Mothers raise their sons for the sacrifice

Babies carry guns and dream of paradise

Nectar and roses and soft dark Arabian nights

Dying for water, and no oasis in sight

No mean day dream bridal magazine

Promises to wave a magic wand

Advertising confidence, fourteen lesson eloquence

Will teach you how to live beside the bomb

High school fools rule, foam from the mouth

Keep you 'til you’re old enough to buy

Teachers talk of temperance, allegiance to coincidence

Snd documents to recompense your pride

No one calls on you to live, no one calls you to die

No one sends roses to crazy old ladies who lie

In dark dusty rooms the size of a small foreign car

Sometimes you wonder where all the good people are

Strangers walk the streets in the summer heat

Tempers shorter than a baby’s dryness

Stepping on your shoes, leaving mind and body bruised

Ain’t it easy now to kill someone for kindness

It’d make a man of any man who’s old enough to cry

Surely make a loser feel at home

Blessings on the children of the city when they die

One more overpopulation gone

You cannot walk the streets no more, or live in town

I always thought there’d be somewhere to crawl

When the sky fell down

I’m watching my horizon exploding

Like a spring too tightly wound

Silence is the only sound