This song could be about multiple things; it's up to interpretation. As far as its poetic meaning, here's what I gather.
It's a song about the "downward spiral" of sorts, and the speaker is trying to get out of it, but because of fear and pain he's having a hard time. The entire song is the speaker writing/speaking to a friend who is drifting away.
"Where do we go from here?
The words are coming out all weird"
Sets up the plot. The speaker is talking to a friend who is drifting away (as seen by the next few lines). The words are coming out all weird can be taken literally: the speaker can not hear his friend speaking, and metaphorically: it's difficult to hear the friend because the friend is going further and further away, so it means the friend is drifting away emotionally.
"Alone on an airplane
Falling asleep against the window pane"
Definite multiple meanings with this line. First of all, it sets up a recurring theme of being at a high altitude/low altitude to make it deal with "The bends" - decompression sickness. Now the entire thing about "the bends" is a metaphor, but I'll get to that later.
Second of all, airplanes are used for travel, so it cements my feeling that the friend is drifting away. This can be taken literally (the speaker's friend is LITERALLY on an airplane leaving) or metaphorically, showing that the friend is emotionally driven away from the speaker.
"Alone" sounds like the speaker's friend was affected by the speaker's fall into his life of deceit/lies.
I don't know what "falling asleep" means. "Alone on the window pane" can be a clever play with words, "pane" being both the window the friend is sleeping on and the pain the speaker and/or the friend feels.
"My blood will thicken"
Also multiple meanings. The "blood thickens in cold weather" saying could relate, because the speaker now feels cold/alone because his friend is gone. However, it can also deal with decompression sickness. The speaker feels the pain of the thick blood (perhaps the air is making it thicker?), aka the pain of his friend leaving.
The rest of the song is his lamentation of his life thus far to his lost friend.
"I need to wash myself again
To hide all the dirt and pain
I'd be scared that there's nothing underneath."
Pretty straightforward. He wants to get rid of his "bad" life, start with a clean slate, but he's afraid. He's afraid of the unknown, he doesn't know what he'll be or what his life will be if he leaves his deceitful friends.
"And who are my real friends
Have they all got the bends?"
Shows that his life right now is pretty bad. He's wondering (somberly) who his friends are, because currently he is living a bad life.
"have they all got the bends?" has multiple meanings.
1) His false friends are all manipulating the speaker, or bending them to their will. The speaker doesn't like living his life but he has no choice because his false friends are making him.
2) Decompression sickness, again. Either a) his false friends have "decompression sickness" and all feel the same pain, causing the speaker to feel pain (emotional pain), and his life is just in the shitter, or b) it can refer solely to the speaker, and the bends his friends have make the speaker feel pain.
"Am I really sinking this low"
Lamenting his current situation. Hates the life he's living. Kind of like an addict who just realized he's sold everything he owns for a little bit of whatever. Also alludes to decompression sickness (sinking? Low? Obviously low altitude)
"My baby's got the bends"
Now everything in his life is being affected by the pain. He's causing the pain of others and/or others are causing his pain.
"We don't have any real friends"
Lamenting. This is just an answer to his original question, finally realizing how bad his life is.
"I'm just lying in a bar with my drip feed on
Talking to my girlfriend."
I can't think of anything deeper to this other than the fact that he's just lamenting his current situation. He's bored of his life. He doesn't like his lying friends. He's "JUST" lying in a bar. Based on the previous lyrics I picture this bar to be pretty dumpy.
"And I wish it was the sixties
I wish I could be happy
I wish
I wish
I wish that something would happen."
1) Could mean he literally wishes it was the sixties. Perhaps the speaker was alive during the sixties and had a better life back then. Maybe his life was more meaningful, more stuff "happened," etc.
2) The sixties could symbolize a fun, "counter-culture" era where a lot of things were going on. Maybe he just wants something like that. Anything better than his life now. It also shows that even though the speaker dislikes his life now, he's really hoping for a better tomorrow.
"Where do we go from here"
Repeating the opening question. Really wants to know.
"The planet is a gunboat in a sea of fear"
I took this as this:
The Planet is the speaker. The speaker is a gunboat because it's always guarded, always ready to attack. The speaker became this way because of the crappy life he's been living, spending all of this time doing nothing with deceitful friends. The sea of fear is of course the universe, which represents the unknown. The speaker proposes that this is what his life would be were he to depart from his deceitful friends. He would always be guarded, always ready to attack, and always afraid if he went into the "real" world.
"And where are you"
Pondering where he friend would be were he to take that step to fix his life. Maybe he is a "gunboat" because his friend is gone?
"They brought in the CIA
The tanks and the whole marines to blow my away"
Hyperbole and metaphor. "They" are his deceitful friends. They lie to him, they manipulate him, just to do it. They want to suck him down with them into a life of pain and loneliness, just like they are.
"To blow my sky high"
Once again, alludes to decompression sickness. "Sky high" - high altitude. They want him to feel the pain.
The next stanza is parallelism. Repeating his desires.
"I want to live and breathe"
Breathing, allusion to the decompression sickness. He wants to be free of it, he wants to actually breathe again.
"I want to be part of the human race"
His life, his friends, his situation - they're unreal. They're not good at all, the speaker wants to get rid of all of that. he wants to join the ranks of the "normal" he wants to have a better life.
Overall, these lyrics are about how fear and pain can control one's life for the worse. I don't know if the lyrics are trying to say to try to overcome this. (Like, if the reader is supposed to learn from the speaker's mistakes).
That's just one meaning. I also think the people that said this was about the band itself could also be right. This song is totally up for interpretation.
This song could be about multiple things; it's up to interpretation. As far as its poetic meaning, here's what I gather.
It's a song about the "downward spiral" of sorts, and the speaker is trying to get out of it, but because of fear and pain he's having a hard time. The entire song is the speaker writing/speaking to a friend who is drifting away.
"Where do we go from here? The words are coming out all weird"
Sets up the plot. The speaker is talking to a friend who is drifting away (as seen by the next few lines). The words are coming out all weird can be taken literally: the speaker can not hear his friend speaking, and metaphorically: it's difficult to hear the friend because the friend is going further and further away, so it means the friend is drifting away emotionally.
"Alone on an airplane Falling asleep against the window pane"
Definite multiple meanings with this line. First of all, it sets up a recurring theme of being at a high altitude/low altitude to make it deal with "The bends" - decompression sickness. Now the entire thing about "the bends" is a metaphor, but I'll get to that later.
Second of all, airplanes are used for travel, so it cements my feeling that the friend is drifting away. This can be taken literally (the speaker's friend is LITERALLY on an airplane leaving) or metaphorically, showing that the friend is emotionally driven away from the speaker. "Alone" sounds like the speaker's friend was affected by the speaker's fall into his life of deceit/lies.
I don't know what "falling asleep" means. "Alone on the window pane" can be a clever play with words, "pane" being both the window the friend is sleeping on and the pain the speaker and/or the friend feels.
"My blood will thicken"
Also multiple meanings. The "blood thickens in cold weather" saying could relate, because the speaker now feels cold/alone because his friend is gone. However, it can also deal with decompression sickness. The speaker feels the pain of the thick blood (perhaps the air is making it thicker?), aka the pain of his friend leaving.
The rest of the song is his lamentation of his life thus far to his lost friend.
"I need to wash myself again To hide all the dirt and pain I'd be scared that there's nothing underneath."
Pretty straightforward. He wants to get rid of his "bad" life, start with a clean slate, but he's afraid. He's afraid of the unknown, he doesn't know what he'll be or what his life will be if he leaves his deceitful friends.
"And who are my real friends Have they all got the bends?"
Shows that his life right now is pretty bad. He's wondering (somberly) who his friends are, because currently he is living a bad life.
"have they all got the bends?" has multiple meanings.
1) His false friends are all manipulating the speaker, or bending them to their will. The speaker doesn't like living his life but he has no choice because his false friends are making him.
2) Decompression sickness, again. Either a) his false friends have "decompression sickness" and all feel the same pain, causing the speaker to feel pain (emotional pain), and his life is just in the shitter, or b) it can refer solely to the speaker, and the bends his friends have make the speaker feel pain.
"Am I really sinking this low"
Lamenting his current situation. Hates the life he's living. Kind of like an addict who just realized he's sold everything he owns for a little bit of whatever. Also alludes to decompression sickness (sinking? Low? Obviously low altitude)
"My baby's got the bends"
Now everything in his life is being affected by the pain. He's causing the pain of others and/or others are causing his pain.
"We don't have any real friends"
Lamenting. This is just an answer to his original question, finally realizing how bad his life is.
"I'm just lying in a bar with my drip feed on Talking to my girlfriend."
I can't think of anything deeper to this other than the fact that he's just lamenting his current situation. He's bored of his life. He doesn't like his lying friends. He's "JUST" lying in a bar. Based on the previous lyrics I picture this bar to be pretty dumpy.
"And I wish it was the sixties I wish I could be happy I wish I wish I wish that something would happen."
1) Could mean he literally wishes it was the sixties. Perhaps the speaker was alive during the sixties and had a better life back then. Maybe his life was more meaningful, more stuff "happened," etc.
2) The sixties could symbolize a fun, "counter-culture" era where a lot of things were going on. Maybe he just wants something like that. Anything better than his life now. It also shows that even though the speaker dislikes his life now, he's really hoping for a better tomorrow.
"Where do we go from here"
Repeating the opening question. Really wants to know.
"The planet is a gunboat in a sea of fear"
I took this as this:
The Planet is the speaker. The speaker is a gunboat because it's always guarded, always ready to attack. The speaker became this way because of the crappy life he's been living, spending all of this time doing nothing with deceitful friends. The sea of fear is of course the universe, which represents the unknown. The speaker proposes that this is what his life would be were he to depart from his deceitful friends. He would always be guarded, always ready to attack, and always afraid if he went into the "real" world.
"And where are you"
Pondering where he friend would be were he to take that step to fix his life. Maybe he is a "gunboat" because his friend is gone?
"They brought in the CIA The tanks and the whole marines to blow my away"
Hyperbole and metaphor. "They" are his deceitful friends. They lie to him, they manipulate him, just to do it. They want to suck him down with them into a life of pain and loneliness, just like they are.
"To blow my sky high"
Once again, alludes to decompression sickness. "Sky high" - high altitude. They want him to feel the pain.
The next stanza is parallelism. Repeating his desires.
"I want to live and breathe"
Breathing, allusion to the decompression sickness. He wants to be free of it, he wants to actually breathe again.
"I want to be part of the human race"
His life, his friends, his situation - they're unreal. They're not good at all, the speaker wants to get rid of all of that. he wants to join the ranks of the "normal" he wants to have a better life.
Overall, these lyrics are about how fear and pain can control one's life for the worse. I don't know if the lyrics are trying to say to try to overcome this. (Like, if the reader is supposed to learn from the speaker's mistakes).
That's just one meaning. I also think the people that said this was about the band itself could also be right. This song is totally up for interpretation.