MODERN LIFE IS WAR LYRICS

1. The Outsiders (A.K.A. Hell Is For Heroes Part I)

So what the fuck are you going to do, kid?
Still ratting at the chains of the gates of the world...
But you can't quite pretend.

Still tasting youth's bitter exile here in your empty generation's wasteland...
Where all the things that you've been clingingto are being ripped from your hands.

Restless soul this place will never be your home.
And if you wanna have it all...
You've gotta let it all go.
Before the adult world strings you up and skins your skinny bones clean to the bone.
'Cause all this time you've been searchin' for something real
And now the pressure is coming down on you.

You've gotta turn this despairinside out and turn it into your way out.

'Cause heaven knows you're sinking and I know we're much the same...
So cheers to our rebel hearts...
Not just another fuck you...
But a bedside love song for a chosen few.
We feel like we've been left in the wind to die in the dust...
With no one speaking to us...
So we are speaking up.
Throwing out our anchor against the fear.
Your revelation time is near.
So try and listen to the voice urging you on...
Saying...
This is it kid...
This is your last chance...
And this is the only way to glory...
And this is our last dance.

2. Martin Atchet

Martin, I've seen the ones you oughta bleed.
They've been driving around in their big stylish cars.
Well, I think they oughta feel your pain.
Yeah.
I think they oughta wear your scars.
'Cause what Ruby told you, well that was true.
Now you better lace up those boots.
'Cause only you know how it felt when the pretty girls looked at you that way.
And somebody is gonna hafta pay.
He's gonna get his revenge.
He's gonna crucify himself for the world's sins.
His name was Atchet.
He was one of them.
He was one of them.
He's coming through the swing door.
He doesn't give a fuck no more.
Cause no one ever gave a fuck about him.
A horrible little monster born into a life of pain.
The only way to relieve the hate:
Justice in the upper tiers of the corporate class tonight.
A little lesson on twisted wrongs and crooked rights.
If he could write the headline in the paper the very next day it would read...
Violence works in mysterious ways...
And somebody is gonna hafta pay...
Somebody's gonna hafta pay.
He's gonna get his revenge.
He's gonna crucify himself for the world's sweet sweet sins.
His name was
Atchet.
He was one of them.
He was a skin.
"Are you a messenger boy?"
"No, I'm the judge and jury.
If you're gonna call the cops...
You better fucking hurry.

There's no use begging for your life.
You made your choice and now you pay the price...
You fucking bastards!
Bastards!
Bastard!"

3. John And Jimmy

The neighbor boy is home from the war.
His father's pride...
It spills across the factory floor.
And Jimmy, in the paper, I saw you...
Holding that gun
And I read the interview about the 234 and the blood in the sand of an oil rich land.
While I was back home safe and clean.
John and Jimmy...
Say a prayer for us...
The passive sinners.
I bite my tongue.
I shake your hand.
Yeah, I'm still playing in that stupid band.
'Cause we all do what we gotta do, boys.

We're all doing whatever we can.

4. Marshalltown

Driving in from the edge of town.
Ice cold winter sun is going down.
And I'm staring just the way I used to through that dirty all night restaurant window.
Just thinkin' bout the things I wish I could give up and the things that won't let me go.
But I know I'm gonna be alright.
My mind won't focus
I take an out of the way drive in and around the north side of town
Where the smoke from hell's exaust pipe lingers above the cheap rent in the dark night.
Hours pass through me.
I'm tired of wasting time.
Half hour later towards the downtown lights.
I don't know what I'm still doing here.
The Coliseum Blue Room has been empty for a long time.
You have to push these kind of thoughts right out of your mind...
And I try.
Something has been wasted.
At least that's what it seems.
All the bars have long closed down.

There's no one but me in the streets of my hometown.
I've already said too much.
I'm all lovesick for endless broken white lines.
And I say to all the young wild ones...
For you...
Yeah on your way up...
The world isn't against you, my dear, it just doesn't care.

5. D.E.A.D.R.A.M.O.N.E.S.

Making come true our modest impossible dreams.
Stuck in public school classrooms at age 15.
Those long hot days just before the summer...
Knowing that we're stuck here...
And there's something happening somewhere.
Knowing we know we gotta get there.
It's true what they say...
Death is more perfect than life...
That's why we already died.
What could have been?
We don't wanna know.
Tonight we'll get our kicks.
Tonight we're all letting go!
'Cause we're all Dead Ramones!
Sore back!
Sore feet!
A ragtag army and we're sick in the heat.
We're not pretty and we're not rich.
We're gonna hafta fucking work for it.
It's our life!
We do what we choose!
Black Jeans.
Black
Shirt.

Black Shoes.
Mom and Dad still don't approve.
Twenty eight shows.
28 days.

Pulling up new rogues all along the way.
I'm just another face in this desperate youth parade.
And all the bunk beds locked doors, hardwood, sweat,
Guts, skateboards, cold war bomb shelter basement screams, no sleep, good dreams.
We're playing hard as we can and a whole lotta time stuck in the van.
Reading the graffiti on every bathroom wall in truck stop fast food hell.
Save me from ordinary.
Save me from myself.
Another punk rock summer came and went
Now I just wanna go back home and turn up my stereo
Until the rhythm melts my bones 'cause I'm a Dead Ramone.
D.E.A.D.R.A.M.O.N.E.S.

6. Young Man On A Spree

I'm in an awful state.
It's getting late and I'm full of question.
My overactive mind has been wastin' all my time.
So I've been wandering aimless every night and sleeping every day.
But it really doesn't matter anyways
'Cause the second coming has been cancelled since sometime around
1982 when Jesus looked down from his cloud and saw school kids...
They were duck and covering.
There's nothing gonna happen out there.
So let's stay in.
Just come on over and let me in.
Outside my windows the sun could be shining but in my head it's all rain, rain and sirens.
We'll have our own Hollywood scandal show.
You wire me up.
I'll be ready to go.
I'll do anything.
I'll assassinate all the stars of all of your bad dreams.
I'll be all yours just as long as you stay here with me
'Cause I don't wanna be alone when these walls start closing in.

7. I'm Not Ready

In this life there are no clean breaks...
But starting again is a chance that you can take.
I always thought that someday we would overcome the bad luck
And from the burden the gift would come.
Maybe I should have known better.

But I know we're coming closer to the end of whatever this has been.
When you're 16 you don't know what forever means.
When you are 23 you couldn't be more sorry to say.
That after all this growing up together all the good has gone away.
Sometimes the boys that should be yours best friends become strangers with familiar faces.
Just don't tell me that it's all too far gone...
That they weren't meant to live on...
And don't let go.
I just don't want to have to pretend...
If we're not in this together...
If we're just stuck inside our own heads.
And I'm sorry that it took me so long to find the words to write the song
That we can all still truly believe in
But I truly believe that we can still start again.

8. Young Man Blues

I'm walkin' past liquor stores and immigrant homes...
Check into cash...
And men with eyes like ghosts.
As boys we were taught to dream in stacks and rows...
Cause to dream any bigger is to dig yourself a hole...
One bigger than you're already in from the moment your life begins.
I'm soaked to the bone at Lawson Arms at 3 a.m.
This cold world has convinced me to betray myself again.
Some faceless men.
Shivering.
Betrayal.
I am one of them.
Never again.
I feel the loneliness of the long distance runner now.
This sterility is rotting me out.
Can't live in service.
I'm dropping out.
Dropping out of tomorrow morning's white washed suburban schemes.
Billboard
Masturbation:
Satisfaction Guaranteed.
I am the 4 a.m.
Arcade Street white bloodshot witness.
I'm just another kid in the chorus.
An empty street corner prophet.

Grimy hands clawing at the gutter on the eve of letting go of crimes against my soul.
They planted their seed...
But I won't let them...
Won't let them tear through me.
'Cause I'm a real cool killer with a killer blow.
A lock-jawed apprentice to my guts of gold.
Plastic surgery to fit the mold.

They'll get you when you're ugly and you're feeling alone.
In this modern life...
Cheap and disconnected...
Where there is a siege going on and the besieged will be the last to know
That the race we are running is a joke,
And I'm a dropout.
Drop-Out.

9. Hair Raising Accounts Of Restless Ghosts (A.K.A. Hell Is For Heroes Part II)

I promised myself I wouldn't lead you on.
So here it is confused and flawed.

As foolish as these words may seem.
As foolish as I may be.
See, I'm just a factory worker's son from a railroad town.
And yeah, I can feel the steel mills rust.
But I've been doing my time and I've been thinking about getting out.
I'm running fast the other way down a narrow dead end road.
I know this won't be the last time I sing
"These dreams will be my anchor.
These dreams will be the death of me."
Through all this I've been feeling like
I'm slowly burning out...
Nothing is all bad...
Nothing is quite right.
So I kept inking and screaming from my room...
The only way I know how to...
I'm calling out to you.
I'm calling out to you.
Nerves wrapped tight around my spine.
I'm past the point of caring what the rest of them think.
They've got the fear.

They're holding back.
And this is for the go-for-broke common-muck few.
And this marks the end of an era and the start of something better.
What can we do when the war is all around?
The veins are constricting the pressure is coming down.
What can we do when the war is all around?
The veins are constricting.
The pressure is coming down.
Everyone knows we're living in a world we just can't trust.
Left in the wind to die in the dust...
So we spoke up.
Crazy, Ugly, Illegitimate...
Never again.
We are the symptom.
We are the torn in the side.
They scream 'til it hurts.
They can't sleep.
I want to be one of them.
We try.
We bleed.
Endless.
Broken.
White.
Lines.
And we don't care anymore.
I don't give a fuck.
'Cause I'm one of them.
Our rebel hearts will turn restless ghosts.
They can never truly kill us and we will never truly die.







MODERN LIFE IS WAR LYRICS