American Experiment from Hospital Radio by Michelle Lynn Ptacek

American Experiment

You talk about peace having a fighting chance
While my brother’s blood line is drawn in the sand
You say all could be forgotten as easily as we forget
But you travel the world with your hands folded
In a fist

And a young man on the front line
For the old man’s bottom line
Is the same old story in a different time
He says I haven’t thought for myself for so long
Now they have to do it for me but they do it all wrong
As the time we’re living on might as well be borrowed
If leaders only go where the people follow
If you think things are better now it’s not legit
They just got you a little to use to it

(refrain)
Say who can say if that is what the forefathers meant
When they called this grand land an American experiment
You’re so young you’re so free
Can you stay that way the way you’re going

You pass off paranoia for awareness but at a cost
When you don’t know why you fight have you already lost
Dividing a wide world into safe zones
where fools on both sides stand as fools alone

(refrain)

What are you looking forward to
Are you looking at all
Where you once suffered from your crimes
Now you suffer from your laws
As kids try to find what this land is built on
They don’t say god-like guns and church bells melted into cannons

(refrain)

Not a drop causing the flood feels guilty
All the tables turned here will simply sit empty
As you try to fill a space everybody else sees
Don’t become a part of the manufactured dream

(refrain)

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