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“Walking Is Still Honest” by Against Me!  

Dear mother,
This is just survival.
Cannot promise your children everything,
But you would lie so they can sleep tonight.
Defeat tasted nothing like you said.
Still 22 days left till the end of the world.
My legacy was making you a man
For a justice I could not change.
This is one voice not to forget;
“Fight every fight like you can win;
An iron fisted champion,
An iron willed fuck up.”

Can anybody tell me why God won’t speak to me?
Why Jesus never called on me to part the fucking seas?
Why death is easier than living?
You can be almost anything
When you’re on your fucking knees.
Not today,
Not my son,
Not my family,
Not while walking is still honest,
And you haven’t given up on me.

Dear shithead,
This isn’t happening;
The sky is really falling,
The paint’s all made of lead,
There’s asbestos in the walls,
Hell’s come over to rip off the doors
To your priveleged heaven.
Do you want to love and feel it?
You can look but you can’t taste it.
You can reach but you’ll never have it.
We are untouchable;
Untouchable is something to be.

Can anybody tell me why God won’t speak to me?
Why Jesus never called on me to part the fucking seas?
Why death is easier than living?
You can be almost anything
When you’re on your fucking knees.
Not today,
Not my son,
Not my family,
Not while walking is still honest,
And you haven’t given up on me  

“Baby, I’m An Anarchist” by Against Me! 

Through the best of times,
Through the worst of times,
Through Nixon and through Bush,
Do you remember ‘36?
We went our seperate ways.
You fought for Stalin.
I fought for freedom.
You believe in authority.
I believe in myself.
I’m a molotov cocktail.
You’re Dom Perignon.
Baby, what’s that confused look in your eyes?
What I’m trying to say is that
I burn down buildings
While you sit on a shelf inside of them.
You call the cops
On the looters and piethrowers.
They call it class war,
I call it co-conspirators.

‘Cause baby, I’m an anarchist,
You’re a spineless liberal.
We marched together for the eight-hour day
And held hands in the streets of Seattle,
But when it came time to throw bricks
Through that Starbucks window,
You left me all alone.

You watched in awe at the red,
White, and blue on the fourth of july.
While those fireworks were exploding,
I was burning that fucker
And stringing my black flag high,
Eating the peanuts
That the parties have tossed you
In the back seat of your father’s new Ford.
You believe in the ballot,
Believe in reform.
You have faith in the elephant and jackass,
And to you, solidarity’s a four-letter word.
We’re all hypocrites,
But you’re a patriot.
You thought I was only joking
When I screamed “Kill Whitey!”
At the top of my lungs
At the cops in their cars
And the men in their suits.
No, I won’t take your hand
And marry the State.

‘Cause baby, I’m an anarchist,
You’re a spineless liberal.
We marched together for the eight-hour day
And held hands in the streets of Seattle,
But when it came time to throw bricks
Through that Starbucks window,
You left me all alone.

“Reinventing Axl Rose” by Against Me!  

We want a band that plays loud and hard every night
And doesn’t care how many people are counted at the door
That would travel one million miles
and ask for nothing but a plate of food and a place to rest

They’d strike chords that cut like a knife
It’d mean so much more than a t-shirt or a ticket stub
They would stop at nothing short of a massacre
And everyone would leave with the memory there was no place else in the world
And this was where they always belonged 

And we would dance like no one was watching
With one fist in the air
Our arenas just basements
and bookstores across an underground America
With this fire we could light
With this fire we could (light)

Just gimme a scene where the music is free
And the beer is not the life of the party
And there’s no need to shit talk or impress
‘Cause honesty and emotion are not looked down upon

And every promise that’s made and bragged
is meant if not kept
We’d do it all because we have to, not because we know why 
Beyond a gender, race, and class,
we could find what really holds us back

Let’s make everybody sing
That they are the beginning and ending of everything
And we are stronger than everything they taught us that we should fear

“Those Anarcho Punks Are Mysterious…” by Against Me!  

we’re all presidents, 
we’re all congressmen, 
we’re all cops 
in waiting, we are the workers of the world. 
there is the elite 
and the dispossessed. 
it’s only about survival. 
who has the skill to play the game for all it’s worth, 
and reach an obscure kind of perfection. 
let’s try and keep as much emotion out of this as possible. 
let’s try not to remember any names. 
we’ll do it for a country, 
for a people, 
for a moral vision. 
united we’ll make them remember 
our history. 
or how we’d like to be told. 
how we like to be told. 
we rock, because it’s us against them 
we found our own reasons to sing, 
and it’s so much less confusing 
when lines are drawn like that. 
when people are either consumers or revolutionaries, 
enemies or friends. hanging onto the fringes of the cogs in the system. it’s just about knowing where everyone stands. 
all of the sudden people start talking about guns, 
talking like they’re going to war. 
cause they found something to die for. 
start taking back what they stole, 
sure beats every other option. 
but does it make a difference how we get it 
well do you really fucking get it

“Scream It Until You’re Coughing Up Blood” by Against Me! 

Everything
You got to hold on to
Everything
You relied on to be there is completely fucked
There’s a skeleton of loyalty hanging in the gallows of your heart
[no one wins this one]
And where are your friends?
Please help me through these years ahead.
Are we just drinking buddies
Playing with each other’s deapest vulnerability?
That this is all we know?
So this is how it’s gonna stay?
I think I
Would rather
Remember how it was and go our separate ways.
I don’t feel anything
Unless we are living and dying for each other
Every second of our lives.

Everything
You thought that it would be,
Everything
You thought you were living for is comepletely fucked.
This is no place to be.
If we don’t get out of here right now,
We’re just gonna end up drunk, fucking,
and fighting and working machines.
If I have another cigarette,
If I drink another beer,
Sit quiet another time when I should’ve said
“Oh, this is too much.
There are things I never wanted to be.”
This ship has sprung a leak
And I’ll be damned if I’m going down with it.
Still breathing at any cost.

“Jordan’s 1st Choice” by Against Me! 

Tell me how could you compromise
Yourself like this?
Tell me how could you blame anyone else
When you aren’t really committed?
Tell me where was your head
When you broke that promise to yourself,
The one where you don’t forget
Every life lesson that happend before your eyes
So you don’t wake up to regret she’s gone years away?
You had hopes and dreams of a day
Where everything, everything, everything would come together,
You wouldn’t have to be so scared.

Are we just working till a day we decide we’ve had enough?
All along
We were strong enough
To be sick of it,
And put them back in their fucking place.
Never asked for this responsibility
We were never in this…
Together.

The reality that you know
Is just behind your idea
Of a society, security, and self.
Am I just fucked up?
‘Cause I can’t remember
The last time any of this made sense,
The last time I
Could stand up to myself.
Street faces all blend into one,
They ask for spare change.
Am I forgetting
What it looks like
From the other side?
Have I forgotten where I’ve come from?

Are we just working till a day we decide we’ve had enough?
All along
We were strong enough
To be sick of it,
And put them back in their fucking place.
Never asked for this responsibility
We were never in this…
Together…

“I Still Love You Julie” by Against Me! 

Last night,
A room full, drunk,
Sang along to the songs I never had
The courage to write.
Given the chance
I’d stay in this chorus forever,
Where everything ugly in this world
Is sadly beautiful
In our desperate memories.
No, we’re not
Gonna call everyone on their shit tonight,
Even though the half of you won’t even smile
The next time we pass on the street.
Maybe somehow
This scam will still save us all…

Still save us all…
Still save us all.
Still save us all…
(Will save us all.)
Still save us all.

Then I saw you
Dancing at a punk rock show
And for a moment
We walked the streets that everyone else
Had given up to 4 AM,
‘Cause promises
And spray paint marking
Everywhere we went
And every direction
Only going as far
As we let it.
There’s so many things
We try to do truthfully.
By the time it’s through with us,
It all falls apart.
Maybe somehow
This scam will still save us all.

Still save us all…
(Will save us all.)
Still save us all.
Still save us all…
(Will save us all.)
Still save us all.

“We Laugh At Danger (And Break All The Rules)” by Against Me! 

It was a birthday gift
of a Mexican Telecaster 
And from this day on I will play along
to all my young pioneers records
And there will be a poetry spoken silently between me and the stereo
I’ll work mornings
and you can work through the night
Mary, there is no hope for us
If this GM van don’t make it
across the state line
we might as well lay down and die
Because if Florida takes us
we’re taking everyone down with us
Where we’re coming from (yeah)
will be the death of us
And I cannot help but hold on
to a handful of times
when what was spoken
was a revolution in itself,
and what we were doing
was the only thing that mattered
And how good it felt
to kill the memory of nights spent
holding your shirt for the smell
I heard you used to cry
when you made love to him
but this band will play on
Because all we can do is what we’ve always done.
And on and on and on…

“The Politics of Starving” by Against Me! 

It’s time for some real world politics
Economics, history, math and English. 
Born and raised and bred walking a thin line,
Between lost and succeeding and don’t ever care about.
The rules aren’t changing it if you really tell it like it is
Threats always been there, terror always happens.

For all the fights, for all the songs, all we said. 
All we have are these pictures of us. 
If it doesn’t matter now, then it never really did,
And without this, we might as well be dead.

They’re all black and white people,
And that doesn’t have anything to do with us. 
After all these years its still an arms race,
After all these years they still don’t fucking get it. 
Lives and cultures matter more than capitalist interest. 
It’s the FBI. Its’ the CIA. It’s the ATF. It’s the IMF, NBC,CBS. 
Fuck you. 

For all the fights, for all the songs, all we said. 
All we have are these pictures of us. 
If it doesn’t matter now, then it never really did.
And without this, we might as well be dead. 

When you are so hungry that you’d believe anything. 
Well, they’re selling you the politics of starving. 
And what the fuck does that really mean to us?