Lives In The Balance

Long before you ever saw your chances
You were going to burn this city down
Tired of the fashions and the dances
Tired of the people standing around
Ticking like a bomb in the night
And you knew you were right
Black and white

Blame it on the time it took to leave here
Blame it on the ones who slowed you down
Blame it on the kind of friends you knew here
Blame it on the sickness going 'round
Going round and round in the night
With your heart out of sight
With your world burning bright
Like a moth 'round a light
Black and white
The pictures of a life in flames
Black and white
The picture of a life remains
And the search you half remember
Setting out on at the start
Is burning like an ember in your heart

Time running out time running out
For the fool still asking what his life is about
Time running out time running out
Time running out time running out
Yeah, beyond a shadow of a doubt
Time running out time running out

Tell them that you've gone to find a person
Someone you lost track of long ago
Tell them that it's someone you need worse than
Anybody else you'll ever know
Ticking like a bomb in the night
You were strong, you were light
You were fast, you were bright
Then you were gone in the light
Black and white
The pictures of a life in flames
Black and white
The picture of a life remains
And the high ideals and the promise
You once dressed the future in
Are dancing in the embers with the wind

Time running out time running out
For the fool still asking what his life is about
Time running out time running out
Time running out time running out
Yeah, beyond a shadow of a doubt
Time running out time running out

God is great, god is good
He guards your neighborhood
Though it's generally understood
Not quite the way you would
You try to take the slack
Stay awake and watch his back
But something happens every now and then
And someone breaks into the promised land
Ah boy boy
This world is not your toy
This world is long on hunger
This world is short on joy

A-e-i-o
You speak as if you know
What's good for everyone
What's good in what you've done?
What's good about a world in which
War rages at a fever pitch
And people die for the little things
A little corn, a little beans

Ah boy boy
This world is not your toy
This world is, this world is
Long on hunger
Short on joy
How much longer
You gonna keep the world hungry boy?

You measure peace with guns
Progress in mega-tons
Who's left when the war is won?
Soldier of misfortune--
Soldier of an angry call
Soldier on foreign soil
I'm not here to fight your war
I know what you're fighting for

Ah boy boy
This world is not your toy
This world is, this world is
Long on hunger
Short on joy
How much longer
You gonna keep the world hungry boy?

Papa hit him, mama kissed him
Made him go to catechism
With the sisters in their black and white
And all the time those city streets
Were teaching him another kind of wisdom
When to run and when to fight
Up at the playground after school
Listening to tales of the prison system
And those lawless avenues

Dawn on a half darkened street
A child's footsteps repeat
And something there turns them
Down those lawless avenues

Silent joe went down so bad
He was the strongest fighter the avenues had
Stabbed in the chest--he went down swinging
Someone from some other part of town
No one even seen it coming down
And you don't hear no church bells ringing
And in the violent night the police light
Sweeps across the lots and the yards
Following those lawless avenues

Down on a half darkened street
Armies advance and retreat
And struggle to take control
From those lawless avenues

Manuelito's sister rosa
Ran away with a surfer from hermosa
Manuelito, cuida a rosa,
Hay mira como estan las cosas!
(manuelito take care of rosa
--look at how things are)

But who could blame her after she saw
Every boy die who could have gotten close to her
Rosa es joven u solo quiere
Ver la belleza del mundo
(rosa is young and only wants
To see the beauty of the world)

Manuel said--
"you gotta fight for what you want in this life"
Just before they shipped him overseas to 'nam
Otra guerra sin razon
Otra guerra sin fin, sin honor
(another war without reason,
Another war without end, without honor)

And she was fighting to understand
When they shipped manuelito's body home
All she heard was one more shot
Echoing down lawless avenues

Hoy amigo, tal igual como ayer,
La lucha en el barrio no cambia
Nuestros hijos son los que han de crecer
Por ley de la calle, viviendo entre abrazos
Y chingazos
(today my friend, just like yesterday,
The struggle in the barrio doesn't change.
Our children are the ones to grow up
By the law of the street
Living between hugs and blows)

Down on a half darkened street
Fathers' and sons' lives repeat
And something there turns them
Down those lawless avenues

En el calor de la calle
(in the heat of the street)
Buscan valor en la calle
(looking for valor in the street)
Hasta final de la calle
(till the end of the street)

I've been waiting for something to happen
For a week or a month or a year
With the blood in the ink of the headlines
And the sound of the crowd in my ear
You might ask what it takes to remember
When you know that you've seen it before
Where a government lies to a people
And a country is drifting to war

And there's a shadow on the faces
Of the men who send the guns
To the wars that are fought in places
Where their business interest runs

On the radio talk shows and the t.v.
You hear one thing again and again
How the u.s.a. stands for freedom
And we come to the aid of a friend
But who are the ones that we call our friends--
These governments killing their own?
Or the people who finally can't take any more
And they pick up a gun or a brick or a stone
There are lives in the balance
There are people under fire
There are children at the cannons
And there is blood on the wire

There's a shadow on the faces
Of the men who fan the flames
Of the wars that are fought in places
Where we can't even say the names

They sell us the president the same way
They sell us our clothes and our cars
They sell us every thing from youth to religion
The same time they sell us our wars
I want to know who the men in the shadows are
I want to hear somebody asking them why
They can be counted on to tell us who our enemies are
But they're never the ones to fight or to die
And there are lives in the balance
There are people under fire
There are children at the cannons
And there is blood on the wire