In regards to the meaning of this song:
Before a live performance on the EP Five Stories Falling, Geoff states “It’s about the last time I went to visit my grandmother in Columbus, and I saw that she was dying and it was the last time I was going to see her. It is about realizing how young you are, but how quickly you can go.”
That’s the thing about Geoff and his sublime poetry, you think it’s about one thing, but really it’s about something entirely different. But the lyrics are still universal and omnipresent, ubiquitous, even. So relatable. That’s one thing I love about this band. I also love their live performances, raw energy and Geoff’s beautiful, imperfectly perfect vocals. His voice soothes my aching soul.
Cowboys in a spaceship
The crowd noise is wasted
Women take pics so they can seem naked
Guys tell jokes so they can see ‘em naked
Church ladies vote what they perceive sacred
Proposition hatred
Phosphorous in riverbeds
Billion dollars spilled to fill esophagus with cigarettes
Philosophers plots to maul nations out of shock and awe
Generation of ideas
Children who won’t talk at all
Profits fall
Chalk on walls
Years spent on prison cells
Next to die
Living hell
His twelve peers didn’t exercise their privilege well
Babies raised through the glass
Bullets at the border war games take a stab
Coordinate who can pass like a paper bag
Minutes on an internet pornpage fornicate make her gag
What’s the damage for the neighbor tagged by the amateur?
Water blast erase the trace of the canisters
Waterpath took the stairways left the banister
Washed over premises turned up percentages
Lost under sludge lots of revised sentences
Defense budgets padded by sandbags and sandwiches
Wasted
Drag this baggage
Hold this Damage
Cope the best that we can manage
Want solutions
Needs new standards
Cry our beauty from the ashes
To do list throw away mail go buy envelopes
Who’s this coulda-been-Rhodes’-Scholar-centerfold
Every day’s a resource to be sure
Its integral to rebirth from t-shirts to minerals
The ward’s filthy
Search for another light in town
Nobody else home
Can’t carry their same load
But I feel guilty like the flight went down
And my cell phone wasn’t on airplane mode
Soy-based newsprint
Blackmarket foodstamps
Poison in the Pete moss
Suffocated beatbox
B-boys in detox
Corrugated cardboard
Lockheed lobbyists floor debating star wars
Yeast and fungi
Springtails ants and nematodes
Sawdust yellowcake
Organics decompose
Bokashi EM-inoculated wheat bran
Toxic compounds broken down under coffee ground
Ancient carcasses in the sphagnum lost and found
Empty cartridges from a magnum
Tossed into agricultural lime rockflour and seaweed meal
Bioremediate man-made molecules
Wasted
Ashes to eggshells
Woodchips to whiskers
Anything we can mess up we can fix up
Sword to plowshare
Soiled from beneath the trash
Detroit red into El-Hajj Malik Shabazz
Oildrum to steelpan
Prisoner to Gramsci
Rose from the concrete
Reverse the flows of the Ponzi schemes
Cripwalk to a conscious beat
Hip-hop is a compost heap
Gangsters to gardeners
Rivals into partners
Fanatics to reformers
Felons into farmers
Inmates to fathers of innercity scholars
Poptart to salad
Teens into college
Lawns into restaurants
Centerfold models to artists
Police abuse to catharsis
Street sergeants into peace departments
Thousand dollar bills to green for all markets
Backlots to blacktops and cashcrops for have nots
Metal into scrap shops
Jobs for the cast-offs
Crackspots into earthships for urban astronauts
Reservation into reservoir
Of wisdom we used to know
Use the whole animal
Landfill to future home
Pacifist guerrillas to bazooka zones
Black hawks to attics
C-130’s to superdome
Newborns on computerphones
So the smile’s not wasted
The crowd noise is wasted
Women take pics so they can seem naked
Guys tell jokes so they can see ‘em naked
Church ladies vote what they perceive sacred
Proposition hatred
Phosphorous in riverbeds
Billion dollars spilled to fill esophagus with cigarettes
Philosophers plots to maul nations out of shock and awe
Generation of ideas
Children who won’t talk at all
Profits fall
Chalk on walls
Years spent on prison cells
Next to die
Living hell
His twelve peers didn’t exercise their privilege well
Babies raised through the glass
Bullets at the border war games take a stab
Coordinate who can pass like a paper bag
Minutes on an internet pornpage fornicate make her gag
What’s the damage for the neighbor tagged by the amateur?
Water blast erase the trace of the canisters
Waterpath took the stairways left the banister
Washed over premises turned up percentages
Lost under sludge lots of revised sentences
Defense budgets padded by sandbags and sandwiches
Wasted
Drag this baggage
Hold this Damage
Cope the best that we can manage
Want solutions
Needs new standards
Cry our beauty from the ashes
To do list throw away mail go buy envelopes
Who’s this coulda-been-Rhodes’-Scholar-centerfold
Every day’s a resource to be sure
Its integral to rebirth from t-shirts to minerals
The ward’s filthy
Search for another light in town
Nobody else home
Can’t carry their same load
But I feel guilty like the flight went down
And my cell phone wasn’t on airplane mode
Soy-based newsprint
Blackmarket foodstamps
Poison in the Pete moss
Suffocated beatbox
B-boys in detox
Corrugated cardboard
Lockheed lobbyists floor debating star wars
Yeast and fungi
Springtails ants and nematodes
Sawdust yellowcake
Organics decompose
Bokashi EM-inoculated wheat bran
Toxic compounds broken down under coffee ground
Ancient carcasses in the sphagnum lost and found
Empty cartridges from a magnum
Tossed into agricultural lime rockflour and seaweed meal
Bioremediate man-made molecules
Wasted
Ashes to eggshells
Woodchips to whiskers
Anything we can mess up we can fix up
Sword to plowshare
Soiled from beneath the trash
Detroit red into El-Hajj Malik Shabazz
Oildrum to steelpan
Prisoner to Gramsci
Rose from the concrete
Reverse the flows of the Ponzi schemes
Cripwalk to a conscious beat
Hip-hop is a compost heap
Gangsters to gardeners
Rivals into partners
Fanatics to reformers
Felons into farmers
Inmates to fathers of innercity scholars
Poptart to salad
Teens into college
Lawns into restaurants
Centerfold models to artists
Police abuse to catharsis
Street sergeants into peace departments
Thousand dollar bills to green for all markets
Backlots to blacktops and cashcrops for have nots
Metal into scrap shops
Jobs for the cast-offs
Crackspots into earthships for urban astronauts
Reservation into reservoir
Of wisdom we used to know
Use the whole animal
Landfill to future home
Pacifist guerrillas to bazooka zones
Black hawks to attics
C-130’s to superdome
Newborns on computerphones
So the smile’s not wasted
Lyrics submitted by hitchcockm00
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