"OCTOBER THE TWELFTH"

ROY HARPER

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdV2CHRgT3E

Why throw flowers on my grave when I'm dead?
Why paint pictures of with the blood that I shed
Why try to copy any word of what I said
When I hated you all when I was living

Why do I waste time trying to create
Why do I still try to communicate
When you do nothing save coagulate
Making bad pretenses of pretending

Why do just sit around counting the days
Why do you act in so many fickle ways
Why does it take all your types to make this world rotate
When almost all of you are hardly breathing?

And who can tell me what religion is for?
And which idiot thinks that a religion is any more
Than just another product of that same religious soul
That flows through time as through a retching body?

How can you ban the bomb
Without first you ban the war
How can you ban the war
Without first you ban the peace
Why does someone talk of peace and someone else of war
When each one is a product of the other 

And how many immortals did you ever see
And how many gods do you think there can be
And how much leaning post do you need before you find the tree
Is dead and just about to fall upon you

How'd you go through living without seeing yourself
And how can you see yourself by searching someone else
And keeping someone's nightmare of a place he labeled hell
Not knowing how to live life without fearing

You teach the children fear to gain some easy applause
Instead of teaching fact you feed them all on Santa Claus
Slowly their poor minds are disillusioned by your laws
Is goodness hard to come by without lying

Why do I sit here and sing you this song
Why have I worried about people for so long
I think you're all right and it's me that's all wrong
And I hated myself when I was living

Why do I sit here and sing you this song
Why have I worried about people for so long
I think you're all right and it's me that's all wrong
And I hated myself when I was living

I think you're all right and it's me that's all wrong
And I hated myself when I was living

And I hated myself when I was living

And I hated myself when I was living

And I hated myself when I was living