Breathe (Breathe)
The air we give (Give)
The life we live (Live)
Our pulses racing distances (Breathe)
So wet my tongue (Give)
Break into song (Live)
Through seas of competition

So please believe your eyes, a sacrifice,
Is not what we had in our minds,
I'm coming home tonight, home tonight

A hero of war
Is that what they see
Just medals and scars
So damn proud of me
And I brought home that flag
Now it gathers dust
But it's a flag that I love
It's the only flag I trust

I have my mother's dreams,
I have my father's eyes,
You can't take that from me,
Just go ahead and try.
The cursed city sleeps,
Watch Ions in the sky,
Preparing to unleash,
Let loose a mighty cry.

Deep inside these burning buildings
Voices die to be heard
Years we spent teaching a lesson
We ourselves had never learned
And if strength is born from heartbreak
Then mountains i could move
If walls could speak
I'd pray that they would tell me what to do

Bang bang from the closet walls,
The schoolhouse halls,
The shotgun's loaded.
Push me and I'll push back.
I'm done asking, I demand.

From a nation under God,
I feel it's love like a cattle prod.
Born free, but still they hate.
Bore me, I can't change.

The city grieves, like widows clasping
folded flags against their hearts.
Raindrops feel like dirt and roses
on black coffins in the dark.

Not yet corpses, still we rot
Oblivious to our decay.
Drinking poison drop by drop,
destined to die...

I've traveled in darkness, for what seems like days,
I've come from the sinkholes, collapsed under this weight.
I know not your sorrow, but I know mine,
So say you'll stay and dance with me tonight.

Take a breath and explode like bullets
Tearing through the wind
Cut me up with a razor blade
Then try to separate the skin
Now when the
White flames are burning flags
We found a world worth dying for yeah

We've been battered so hard that
We don't feel anymore

Wings won't take me,
Heights don't phase me,
So take a step but don't look down,
Take a step...

If I held my ground
Would you ask me to change?
This drought bleeds on now
We're dancing for rain
We drink the air but
It's still not the same
These worlds collide
But the distance remains
We point the finger, never accept
The blame and I know.. I know

White needles buried in the red
The engine roars and then it gives
But never dies
'Cause we don't live
We just survive
On the scraps that you throw away

I won't crawl on my knees for you
I won't believe the lies that hide the truth
I won't sweat one more drop for you
'Cause we are the rust upon your gears

But we ran away,
Now all my friends are gone,
Maybe we've outgrown all the things
That we once loved.
Run away, but what are we running from?
A show of hands from those
In this audience of one...
Where have they gone?

Identities assume us
As nine and five
Add up,
Synchronizing watches
To the seconds that we lost.

When the air that we breathe becomes air that we choke
When the marsh fever spreads from the swamps to our homes
When your home on the range has been torn down and paved
And the buffalo roam to a slaughterhouse grave
What more will it take

Wake me up inside
Tell me there's a reason
Take another step
To get up off my knees and,
Follow this path of most resistance.
How ever it takes us,
Whatever it faces and wherever it leads,

Black eyes, broken fingers,
Blood drips and I let it run
Down my lips into my swollen gums,
When hope is non-existent,
Our instincts all scream "Run", we never
Turn our backs or even bite our tongue.

We live on front porches and swing life away,
We get by just fine here on minimum wage
If love is a labor I'll slave till the end,
I won't cross these streets until you hold my hand

You can't feel the heat until you hold your hand over the flame
You have to cross the line just to remember where it lays
You won't know your worth now, son, until you take a hit
And you won't find the beat until you lose yourself in it

Fly on paper wings half way round the world
until they burned up in the atmosphere
And sent you spiraling down
Landing somewhere far from here
With no one else around to catch you falling down
And I'm looking at you now

A lost dream of what could have been
A house on fire, a tangled web
The key turns to find the locks have changed
In time to hear the back door slam
A sound that to this day I can't forget
The colors drained to black and gray

Echoes of songs still lurk
On distant foreign shores
Where we danced just to please the gods
That only ask for more, so it goes

But still we give ourselves to this,
We can't spend our lives
Waiting to live

So open your eyes child
Let's be on our way
Broken windows and ashes
Are guiding the way

Keep quiet no longer
We'll sing through the day
Of the lives that we've lost
And the lives we've reclaimed