Powerless

I think this song's lyrics have one of the more straightforward meanings on Living Things, but it's still a powerful song.

Long story short, I feel that this song is about being a friend of someone who had relapsed into an addiction and died from it - most likely drugs. If you want to understand why I feel this way, though, then here's how I interpret the lyrics:

"You hid your skeletons, when I had shown you mine"

The friend of the addict felt betrayed because he had come clean to him about his own problems and tried to fix them (Perhaps he had been suffering from a drug addition as well and wanted to quit), yet the addict refused to come clean himself, let alone change his ways.

"you woke the devil that I thought you'd left behind"

This, to me, seems to suggest that the addict may have been clean at one point but eventually had a relapse, unbeknownst to the friend.

"I saw the evidence the crimson soaking through"

Eventually, the friend realized that the addict had reverted back to his old ways and was trying to hide it.

"ten thousand promises, ten thousand ways to lose..."

Perhaps that when he was found out, the addict tried to make a bunch of promises to his friend that he'd stop, that he could control his addiction, but the friend knew better, for he realized those promises were empty and that the addict was only sorry for being caught.

"And you held It all but you were careless to let it fall"

Again, I feel that at one point, the addict had washed the slate clean and had the chance to move on, but, due to his carelessness, he let himself relapse.

"you held it all and I was by your side Powerless"

This seems to suggest that the friend of the addict tried to help him but soon came to realize that there was nothing he could say or do but stand by him as his addiction slowly took its toll.

"I watched you fall apart and chased you to the end"

At this point, the friend is desperate. In the back of his mind, he knows that there's nothing he can do, yet he continues to try to help the addict anyway, as he can't just sit idly by as he "falls apart," as it were. I feel that soon after this, the addict died, even though the friend did the best he could to try to stop it, figuratively chasing him "to the end," the "end" being the end of the addict's life.

"I'm left with emptiness, that words can not defend"

At this point, the friend has gone into a depression because of the end result of the addict's addiction. He probably feels so betrayed, so helpless, that he can't even find the words to describe how empty he feels inside.

"you'll never know what I became because of you"

This is the main line that led me to believe that the addict had died, as since he is dead, he'll never know what he put his friend through, how much he scarred him. He'll never know the kind of person his friend had become because of his poor decisions.

"Powerless!

Powerless!

Powerless!"

Yelling "Powerless!" over and over again summarizes and emphasizes basically how the friend felt during the whole ordeal: Powerless. Despite all of his efforts, despite how much he may have cared for the addict, he knew that deep down, there was absolutely nothing he could do, that even though he DID try to help in every way possible, his efforts were fruitless and left him feeling powerless to change the end result.

That was how I interpreted it, anyway. It'll be interesting to see how others interpret the lyrics.