PANOPTICON LYRICS

1. Bernheim Forest In Spring

[Instrumental]

2. Bodies Under The Falls

As the water passes over the rock bed, so gentle and quiet,
You can hear their cries in the crashing water.
Bodies dashed against the rocks below where ghosts at the galls roam.
The blood stained soil, their ancestral forest…
Where only trees now know of the horrors seen here.
Forgotten.
A nation left to weep, like spilling water over the falls.
The water passes over stone, falling so far below.
Split blood and splintered bone where cherokee ghosts roam.
Pale faces in the mist, demons who claim the mountains,
treading beneath looming cliff.
The cool, still air permeating your skin.
The rhythm of the water pounding the forest floor whispers to us with the voices of proud warriors overcome.
The treaty was broken, the land has been stolen.
THE FOREST IS HAUNTED.
Softly whispering in the dead air…
The blood stained stones in the deep…
Morosely contrasting against appalachian green…
Flows into the river, whisked away…vengeance was claimed on that day.
Bullets for every pale face.
The price owed could never be paid.
Sorrow fills the air where tribal souls sleep beneath the cliffs where ywahoo falls forever weeps...

3. Come All Ye Coal Miners

Come all you coal miners wherever you may be and listen to a story that I'll relate to thee.
My name is nothing extra, but the truth to you I'll tell I'm a coal miner's son. I'm sure I wish you well.
I was born in old Kentucky, in a coal camp born and bred.
I know all about the pinto beans, bulldog gravy and corn bread.
And I know how the coal miners slave and work in the coal mines every day for a dollar in the company store, for that is all they pay.
Coal mining is the most dangerous work in our land today with plenty of dirty, slaving work and very little pay.
Coal miner, won't you wake up and open your eyes and see what the dirty capitalist system is doing to you and me.
They take your very life's blood, they take our children's lives.
They take fathers away from children, and husbands away from wives.
Oh miner, won't you organize wherever you may be and make this land of freedom for workers like you and me.
Dear miner, they will slave you till you can't work no more.
And what'll you get for your living but a dollar in the company store?
A rundown shack to live in, snow and rain pours in the top.
You have to pay the company rent, your payin' never stops.
I am a coal miner's son. I'm sure I wish you well.
Let's sink this capitalist system in the darkest pits of hell.

4. Black Soot And Red Blood

Tonight the dis-harmonic symphony of the cicadas plagues my ears…
Drifting off to the mind numbing hum of grinding gears.
Families starving in the eerie silence of the hills…
Lie exposed to the elements so fierce, so fierce…

Hold out just one more day…
Say the same tomorrow…
Say the same tomorrow.
For the union hold out,
For a fair wage and a living this sorrow.
For a fair wage and a living this sorrow.

Living and dying union men.
Living and dying union men.

Meet them in the streets,
Meet them in the hollers,
Meet them in the hills and don't back down, don't back down.

Fight for what is right,
For every working man to earn his keep.
Fight for what is right
'Til they meet your demands…in Bloody Harlan…

[Speech:]
Well, at that time we were working ten hours a day, but we were getting 6 and a fraction cents an hour.
Well, we breaker-boys would have our feet in the (coal) chute and we'd be picking the slate out.
Well, the breaker-boss'd sneak up behind us, and if he'd see a piece of slate coming through he'd pick up the piece and he'd hit you in the back with it, and he'd hit you hard!
And he'd say, "Pick that slate out!"
Well, he used to abuse us actually.
Well, finally, we got to a stage where we figured that 'Well, we're going to strike.'
That was when I learned my first real important lesson about what happens when you take a position against the coal operators, against the Catholics.
Well, the first thing that happened: the union officials came to us and told us had to go back to work, that we were violating the 'agreement.'
We said, "To hell with the agreement, we're going to stay out and strike until we get our demands."
Well, then the politicians started visiting us and putting pressure on us, and the parish priests.
Well, finally the coal company agreed to meet with us, and they agreed to raise the hourly pay from 6-and-a-fraction cents to 8 cents an hour.
So we got big concession, today that wouldn't mean anything; that's only peanuts. But it meant a whole lot to us, for our paycheck at that time.
Well, this was my first lesson that if you stuck to your senses, stuck to your organization, and stuck together in solidarity you could defeat them.
Besides that I learned that the politicians worked with the coal companies.
I found out the union officials were working with the coal companies.
I also found out that the catholic hierarchy was working with the coal commissions.
Here was a combination of the whole thing, see?
That you had to pulp up against the whole combination.
When the coal and iron trying out find out who was trying to instigate a union, well, they'd abuse them!
[Speech continues]

Lives laid down for the union.
Scarlet red around your neck.
Black lungs and broken backs in Bloody Harlan, in Bloody Harlan…in Bloody Harlan.

The years go on and the mountains crumble.
The right to live and work, sacrificing body and land.
From Kentucky to West Virginia the workers rise and fall while wringing hands profit off of it all...

5. Which Side Are You On?

Come all of you poor workers, good news to you I'll tell.
Of how that good old union has come in here to dwell.
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
We are starting our good battle we know we're sure to win because we got the gun thugs looking pretty thin.
They say in Harlan County. There are no neutrals there.
You'll either be a union man, or a thug for J.H. Blair.
Oh, workers can you stand it?
Oh, tell me how you can.
Will you be a lousy scab, or will you be a man?
(oh death, oh death, please spare me over for another year)
My daddy was a miner he's now in the air and sun
he'll be with you fellow workers till every battle's won.

6. Killing The Giants As They Sleep

We wept as we passed through the mountains clothed in July clouds,
under the restraint of power lines, their fury bursting through the summer haze as ethereal music filled the air.
Nearly conquered by the mountain, I have found such deep respect for what you destroy.
Older than time and cut down by a lesser foe, like thieves in the night mined for coal.
Timeless stone buried beneath, unearthing the secret poisons into its belly…
You hack at the mountain and scrape away for your simple need what was formed by silent gods on the day the void first burst with sound.
Pulsing with life, you don't see its shimmering green.
You see the deeps hue of coal, grey smoke and black waters in the stream…
Poison the earth, poison the stream, killing the weary giants as they sleep, blackened waters, sand and soot-grinding gears halt serenity.

7. Black Waters

I come from the mountains, Kentucky's my home where the wild dear the black bear so lately did roam.
By the cool rushing water fall the wild flowers dream and in every green valley there runs a clear stream.
Now there are scenes of destruction on every hand and only black waters run down through my land.
Sad scenes of destruction every hand.
Black waters, black waters run down through my land.
Well the quail, she is a pretty bird, she sings a sweet tongue.
In the roots of the tall timber she nests with her young.
Then the hillside explodes with a dynamite's roar and the voice of the small bird will sound there no more.
And the mountain comes a sliding so awful and grand and the flooding black waters rise over my land.
In the coming of the spring time we planted our corn.
In the end of the spring time we buried our son.
In the summer comes a nice man who says everything's fine my employer just requires a way to his mine.
Then they tore down the mountain and covered my corn and the grave on the hillside a mile deeper down.
In the man stands a talking with his hat in his hands while the poisoned black waters rise over my land.
Sad scenes of destruction every hand.
Black waters, black waters run down through my land.
Well I ain't got no money, not much of a home I own my own land but my land's not my own but if I had 10 billion or somewhere thereabouts I'd buy Perry County and run 'em all out and sit on the banks with my bait and my can and watch the clear waters run down through my land.
Now wouldn't that be like the old promised land?
Black waters black waters no more in my land.

8. Kentucky

[Instrumental]








PANOPTICON LYRICS