The Burning City Smoking Lyrics - Put Your Ghost To Rest - Kevin Devine

Forty million refugees with no place on this earth to call there home 

One for every aimless graduate with nothing else to show for it but loans 

And those of us who make our mark use someone else's blood 

Our western stain won't wash away, it won't vanish in the flood 

It seeps deeper through each hurricane and tidal wave and war 

Oh woah oh oh 

We want everything we see and once it's gone we just want more 

Atlas had those shoulders, we've got Ambien and Jameson's and blow 

To bind us in a bubble and keep the newsprint nightmare distant and remote 

But when we wake in gulitines and pitch our screaming fits 

When the govenor strikes up the band and gags our parted lips 

When the worst case shows up dressed and dazzling, ready for the ball 

Oh woah oh oh 

But that bubbles bound to burst and what a tragic way to fall 

The tabloids tell us hate 

The rat who strikes those subways closed and put's you out 

Forget those fifty hour tunnel weeks 

Inhaling steel dust poison through his mouth 

Well if he don't deserve a pension it makes his family feel secure 

If we're now so dissconected it's our reflections we ignore 

And if our constant choice is skimming past the writing on the wall 

Oh woah oh oh 

Then I'm sad to say we're lost and I'm embarrassed for us all 

So most days I can't put to rest the burning city smoking in my mind 

And I play and pretend the principles are nothin' more than actors runnin' lines 

And I stumble through a movie set where tourtered victims laugh 

And embedded journalists who juggle knives and daggered glass 

While they entertain a mob of heads of state and CEO's 

Oh woah oh oh 

I stagger past anarchist extras through saloon doors painted gold