All the truth comes storming out
Of candle lit backrooms
Lighting them one by one
Candle by candle

Of throttlings
Shootings
Gassings
Thrashings

Lynchings
Forget about that just go back to work.

Lucky you still have a job

And lootings
What of lootings?
Lootings after throttlings
shootings gassings and lashings?
And the lynchings?

We’re broke
We are all broke
Poor people are like white tail deer

Just shoot ‘em

Forget about that just go back to work.

Boss said he’ll give us a $100 bonus for Christmas

But what about

The thousands of innocent mentally ill who were shot on their mothers’ lawns?
The state police who make unlawful incursions into indigenous reservations to harass?
And that nurse who was arrested and beaten by police
Because she refused to give a blood test without a warrant?

Or killing a man because he was selling
CDs
Cigarettes
or other sundry?

                                       Or just standing?

Forget about it just go back to work.

And many other things that I don’t have time to mention or
More importantly reports that have been buried by your boss?

Let me get this straight: you kill people for selling something which you deem unlawful

Well how about the stock market?

We hear you, the Boss says,
Numb yourself
We’ve got service industry night
OxyContin
And heroin.

It’s Monday. Get back to work.

No, I do not smear my speech with honey
I do not sugar it up to be likeable
No, I know what you are.

The dead howl at you
They cry out for the truth.

Get back to work!

You call us hooligans, thugs, ne’er-do-wells
But you are the real gangsters
And we don’t need you anymore
And you’re pissing your pants.

In anger I writhe a rattlesnake at
How my brethren were beaten in Bethel

After a young man was struck in the back of his head
And a young woman got a black eye
As the cops looked on and did nothing
Another man said “he’s lucky we didn’t shoot him”

And y’all was waving flags
Hoo rah indeed

The truth is gonna come storming out
After every one of you

Like I say, I’m a rattlesnake.
We only strike when threatened.

And there are hundreds of millions of rattlesnakes across the globe
with tails a’ rattlin’
Just a’ waitin’ to tell you the truth.