Another Bag of Bones - Kevin Devine

It’s a brushfire spreading, feeding as it moves

It’s a disappeared glacier, it’s an airborne flu

It’s your disbelieving eyes locked in concrete miles

It’s your yawning conscious and your lawyer’s smile

It’s an occupied country, foaming at the mouth

No smoking gun, no mushroom cloud

It’s a military mother with a boy in hell

And it’s a flag draped casket down an oil well

It’s an Argentina school girl, gagged and bound

It’s a torture camp, it’s a long way down

It’s the constant brace and shock of now

It’s the whole damn world turned inside out, all right

It’s a march to extinction with your god in step

It’s his name in your mouth, it’s his cross on your neck

It’s a farm boy sprinting over desert dirt

And he’s panting the 'Our Father' in staccato spurts

Now that’s his automatic rifle and it tells no lies

That’s his truth in your stomach, it’s no alibi

But the trouble lies on the other side

With an equal truth prepping for his holy night

He sees his crescent and the star in the virgin sky

He hears the call of milk and honey from the afterlife

And as he eases to the check point, he is calm and sure

It’s collateral damage, it’s the cost of war

It’s another bag of bones for the gods to sort

It’s just another bag of bones for the gods to sort

It’s the species disappearing, all the birds fly south

In a January heat wave and a pulsing crowd

It’s an African militia, kids with sub machines

It’s a conflict diamond on your bride to be

It’s the dispossessed lining up every gate

It’s the facts worth facing, faced way too late

It’s the mission of modernity, go get what’s yours'

'Til there’s nothing leftover to get no more

And it’s not what were owed but it’s what we’ve earned

And it’s closer than we realized that it’s time now, to burn

It’s time now to burn

Oh, it’s time now to burn