(idea) by NothingLasts4ever Thu Aug 30 2001 at 12:32:57
Lyrics: John Perry Barlow
Music: Brent Mydland
Recordings
Built To Last (studio 1989)
covered on Dare To Dream by Toni Brown
First performance: February 5, 1989, at the Henry Kaiser Auditorium, Oakland
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We don't own this place though we act as if we did
It belongs to the children of our children's kids
The actual owners haven't even been born yet

But we live in the garden and we rarely pay the rent
Most of it is broken and the rest of it is bent
Put it all on plastic and I wonder where we'll be when the bills hit

We can run but we can't hide from it
Of all possible worlds we only got one, we gotta ride on it
Whatever we've done we'll never get far from what we leave behind
Baby we can run, run, run but we can't hide

Well I'm dumping my trash in your back yard
Making certain you don't notice really isn't so hard
You're so busy with your guns and all of your excuses to use
them

Well it's oil for the rich and babies for the poor
We've got everyone believing that more is more
If a reckoning comes maybe we'll know what to do then

We can run but we can't hide from it
Of all possible worlds we only got one, we gotta ride on it
Whatever we've done we'll never get far from what we leave behind
Baby we can run, run, run but we can't hide

All these complications seem to leave no choice
I heard the tongues of billions speak with just one voice
Saying just leave all the rest to me, I need it worse than you, you see
Then I heard the sound of one child crying

Today I went out walking in the amber wind
There's a hole in the sky where the light pours in
I remember the days when I wasn't afraid of the sunshine

But now it beats down on the ashphalt land
Like hammering blow from God's left hand
What little still grows
Cringes in the shade till the night-time

We can run but we can't hide from it
Of all possible worlds we only got one, we gotta ride on it
Whatever we've done we'll never get far from what we leave behind
Baby we can run, run, run but we can't hide

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One of the Dead's more overtly political/moralistic songs... in the late 80's they wrote several including Victim or The Crime, Throwing Stones and Standing on the Moon. I believ it was in reaction to the Regan/Bush (the elder) years and the return to the right in America at that time.

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