Here's the Rest of Your Life

Why settle for what we're shown

When there is so much more?

Sometimes the Book of Law

Is only half the story

Means and ends:

Deciding where to draw the line

Loss or work in Sellafield homes

Or the threat of cancers yet to come?

The choice is obvious:

There is no choice

Only the option of looking outside

This narrow definition of "What you see is all there will ever be"

There comes a time - that time is now -

When every second, every day

When every action, every thought

Will tell the world how you cast your vote

They break our legs

And we say "Thank you" when they offer us crutches

Tired of mild reform

Sick of hand-me-downs

We topple all the theories to the ground:

All real change

Must come from below

Our bosses must live in fear

Of the factory-floor

And when they smile

And they ask for my support,

I'll give them these words

And a bloody nose:

You don't help your enemy

When you're at war

There are moments in all of our lives

Tiny sparks still deep inside

When a new-born baby cries

When you're watching clouds in a summer sky

The first time you walked out on strike

Love and sex and holding light

Tings that can't be bought

By promises and votes

I hate the things I love being criminalised

I hate the straight-jacket schools I grew up in

I hate MPs, judges and magistrates

I hate being taught to base my life on TV stars

I hate being kept waiting by bureaucrats

I hate wars, and all the people who love them

I hate the idea of living on other people's backs

I hate being filed, registered and classified

I hate being watched and monitered

I hate police

I hate the way you talk down at me

I hate being told what to do

I hate you when you don't listen

I hate the way you distort my sexuality with pornography

I hate the pain we inflict on each other

On animals, and on the Earth

And I hate how love songs have become such cliches

through endless, shallow repitition

Each angry word

Every cynical put-down

Every song is carefully born

From a hope of something better to come

All jumbled-up

Love and hate and love

Each prompted by the other:

For the cause of peace we have to go to war

Refusing to sleep

Whilst there's a world to win

Yet happy to dream

Dreams make the plans to change this world

Not just some future heaven

But today and every day

In our place of work

In the queue for the metrobus

Organise!

Here's the rest of our lives!

..A tiny spark still deep inside

We can and will run the factories and mills

We can and will educate ourselves

We can and will work the fields

We can and will police ourselves

We can and will create and build

Organise!

Here's the rest of our lives!