The hour is out of joint   Black sun has risen   And the river of words   Is flowing on through   The cages of tradition   They're handing out emptiness   We'll take it, 'cause it's given   Free with this plastic innocence   And these standards of living      Questions, lighted questions   Burnin' holes into my head   Hanging like shadows o'er the sun   Staring out like the eyes of the dead   And sometimes my soul flickers   As the wind of change blows cold   Over the mire of repetition   Down the corridors of rigamarole      What I say, what I think   What I put down in ink   I'm only tryin' to find a way to understand   And I mean no harm   I'm just searching for calm   In the storm of mankind      Do you find it there   In the sea of faces   That drowns you every day   Or in the silence and rubble and empty spaces   Where children and rottweilers play   Is it buried in the praise   Given so cheap   With a meaningless movement of the jaws   In the looking glass   That flatters you   Or in the rattle of hollow applause      Blind circle, moon and sun   Body willing, mind undone   One pain ending while another begins   Lies, ruin, disease   Into wounds like these   Let the truth sting      From the hub to the limit   Through the urban hollows   Out into the poles of the extreme   To echo through the numbness   Of these godless minutes   In the shadow of delusion's regime      But here watching the night   As it opens like a flower   And the day starts to rust   Feeling time pound   Like a silent hammer   On this empire of dust   And I'm thinking 'bout the bullet   And the TV screen, the dollar, and the clenched fist   And if we're searching for peace   How come we still believe   In hatred as the catalyst      Through the borderline   In front and behind   Down the road of thorns   Between the the barbwire and the soul   Bitters and chains   Is all that remains   Where the wheel has rolled      I feel it from the pit of my stomach   Into the ditch of my mind   Inside the chambers of my heart   As I stare half blind   At these walls of cardboard   At this space that I've rented   At your beauty that is crumbling   Though you try so hard to prevent it      On and on   Body willing, mind undone   One pain ending while another begins   Lies, ruin, disease   Into wounds like these   Let the truth sting   Let the truth sting   Let the truth sting