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The War Criminal Rises and Speaks

 
                   C
The heart wants to feel.
                   Em
The heart wants to hold.
                     Am                                                           F
The heart takes past Subway, past Stop and Shop,past Beal's, and calls it "coming home."
                  Dm              G
The heart wants a trail away from "alone,"
                     Dm          F         G
so the heart turns a sale into a well-worn milestone

                      C
towards hard-won soft furniture,
                Em
fought-for fast food,
             Am                                        F
defended end table that holds paperbacks and back U.S. News.
                  Dm          G
The mind turns an itch into a bruise,
                       Dm                              F  G
and the hands start to twitch when they're feeling ill-used.

                  C                            Em
And you're almost back now, you can see by the signs;
                           Am                                                          F
from the bank you tell the temperature and then the time, and the billboard reads some headlines.
                  Dm                      G
The head wants to turn, to avert both its eyes,
                      Dm                                  F             G
but the mind wants to learn of some truth that might be inside reported crimes.

                    C
So they found a lieutenant
                        Em
who killed a village of kids.
                Am                                                       F
After finishing off the wives, he wiped off his knife and that's what he did.
                         Dm                        G
And they're not claiming that there's any excusing it;
                      Dm                                             F                 G
that was thirty years back, and they just get paid for the facts the way they got them in.

                        C
Now he's rising and not denying.
                           Em
His hands are shaking, but he's not crying.
                     Am                                    F
And he's saying "How did I climb out of a life so boring into that moment?
       G                 C                               Em
Please stop ignoring the heart inside, oh you readers at home!
                            Am                                                 F
While you gasp at my bloody crimes, please take the time to make your heart my home:
                      Dm                           G
where I'm forgiven by time, where I'm cushioned by hope,
                         Dm                              F  G
where I'm numbed by long drives, where I'm talked off or doped.
                         C
Does the heart wants to atone?

    Em
Oh, I believe that it's so,
                         Am                                                               F
because if I could climb back through time, I'd restore their lives and then give back my own:
                      Dm                    G
tens of times now its size on a far distant road
                 Dm                                         F       G
in a far distant time where every night I'm still crying, entirely alone."

        F                 G                       Am
But the news today always fades away as you drive by,
         F                   C             G
until at dinnertime when you look into her eyes,
       F                      G                  C                     Am
lit by evening sun - that, as usual, comes from above that straight, unbroken line,
F       G         F G         C G Am
the horizon - its rising is a given,
               F G
just like your living.

                      C
Your heart's warm and kind.
                  Em
Your mind is your own.
                    Am                                       F
Our blood-spattered criminal is inscrutable; don't worry, he won't
                    Dm                    G
rise up behind your eyes and take wild control.
                 Dm                     F G
He's not of this time, he fell out of a hole.
 
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Page last modified on November 21, 2005, at 12:33 AM