FOUR WARS by Tom Jensen
When words are at a loss
You have to toss the cross
That for you they made
Rip off their masks and hoods
In this game of charades
No one gets to cash in
Until the debt’s been paid
And never give in
Unless you’re dead in your grave
That’s my creed and what I believe
So try it if you dare
It’s served me well
I feel compelled to freely share
What some others might try to sell:
There are only three words
In which I believe…fight for peace!
There are three wars in which
I would have gladly fought
And let myself bleed:
I would have protected my Native American friends
For once Columbus came their way of life ends
The New World was their world
And we gave them thanks
We gave them liquor and blankets with small pox
To which they weren’t immune…
Hey, sometimes life sucks
While they gave us land and beads and seeds…
All traded for disease
Thanks be to the king-hating Europeans
I’d sneak up and throw my tomahawks so fast
That they wouldn’t even see ‘em
If you listen closely you might hear a gurgling sound
As a man lay gasping and twitching on the ground
Then I’d look around for every pale face in town
Find a white village and then burn it down
One by one we would take our revenge
And then surely the massage would’ve been sent:
Go sail back home and leave us alone!
There are only three words
In which I believe…fight for peace!
There are three wars in which
I would have gladly fought
And let myself bleed:
Fight to free the freedom of choice
As a man gets whipped he loses his voice
We need to fight the ignorance and greed
Shoot every last racist mother fu$%er
Who dares to raise a fist to try to keep
My black brothers from being free
I know white men who were born true niggers
So let your fingers man the triggers
As John Brown comes back for all to see
Ten men die so that one might live
Unchained and free…
So let it be
While dreaming of a country-wide genocide
Under white hoods some of them might hide
But the times shall change
From these…the sick and deranged
As Frederick Douglas is still alive inside of me
There are only three words
In which I believe…fight for peace!
There are three wars in which
I would have gladly fought
And let myself bleed:
Throw away your free will and follow me
That’s what Hitler screamed
When he guaranteed victory
Don’t you want a couple slaves for your son?
Hey, payback’s a bitch…
And we all remember World War One
After naked Jews were slaughtered in the streets
You wouldn’t even recognize their faces
As a belief was spreading in Germany
About the superiority of the Arian race
The race above all other races
But Hitler was but one man
So just what could he have the power to do?
Thus America said leave us out of this
In the very beginning of World War Two
And long after Roosevelt’s new deal came and went
Hitler, Hirohito and Mussolini soon bet the house
Perhaps if Japan hadn’t been so anxious
Then all of us good guys might have been wiped out
There are only three words
In which I believe…fight for peace!
There are three wars in which
I would have gladly fought
And let myself bleed:
But not this sh$% today when we fight someone
And the battle cry is your country’s corporate greed
Only for the Native Americans…
And in the Civil War…
In World War Two…
And in the eventual World War Three
You know that the numbers just keep going higher
And some time in the future
Someone’s gonna start a real big fire
That someone else is going to have to put out
And you know that someone will end up being me