Past and Future Ruins

Hold your hand to the fire and your eyes to the sky
They're just different shades of cellophane taped against the lights
Faulty seams drawn on plastic leaves
Past and future replicas
Past and future streams

Hold your head underwater
Try to see if you can breathe
Or if you drown in the shallow depths of your belief

'Cause somewhere there must be a better place
If you call to your neighbor to see the track is set
And they're walking back and forth in a circle
Saying the same words, making their lips sync
In time with psalms on Sunday mornings
And all their hearts alight with pale fire

So call the paper ambulance
To trace the paper cuts
Don't call on me, I'm a plastic reed
Bending in the fading wind of artificial fields

Then you read in the paper of a woman's early death
And the note explaining why she left
It says, "Somewhere there must be a better place
And it's marked with the fountain I've seen glowing in my sleep"
So you want to die and leave this shadow land behind
To eviscerate the truth from the lie

'Cause somewhere there must be a better place
What we thought was a mountain of life and light
Turns out to be a mountain crushing down upon us, casting its shadow
Closing the distance between us and Babylon
And all our songs are just the sounds of past and future days
Past and future names collapsing around us