Please Don't Thank Me For My Service

PLEASE DON’T THANK ME FOR MY SERVICE zamarripa (2019)

I was taken against my will
Spring of ’68, seems like yesterday still
Everything I saw went against what was taught ‘bout America and God and law
My conscience bloodied, a coup d etat,
By my own government

So no, don’t thank me for
The innocent voices snuffed, forever wordless
For my youthful dreams deferred, now worthless
For the tremor and terror, I can’t purge it
So no, don’t thank me for my service

I can hear the screams of the dying
The bombs and burning babies crying
I feel my brother’s blood explode across my face, still can’t erase the stain
For what, for who, why, still remains unexplained
Sgt, said: “Don’t worry son, the horror soon becomes mundane”

So no, don’t thank me for
I gotta million of sins to confess, but there ain’t enough churches
Across this whole haunted Empire of Scourges
For the Beast on my shoulder, who forever perches
So no don’t thank me for my service

We’re really just fightin’ for the plutocrat-oligarchy
Yeah man we all know what it means
Though it’s everything we’re not supposed to know and believe
I have become everything Sweet Jesus told me not to be
What do my children see when they look at me?

When you lose all moral authority
You’re just blunt force runnin’ on the fumes of debt, deception, lawlessness, and greed
I was frozen, standing in my baby boy’s nursery, in line at the grocery store, I’m a stranger staggering through my own community
A brainwashed, trained killer sinkin’ in shattered humanity
With tears falling, with shame like a deafening siren, pursuing me, calling, with the war whores on tv
Still lying, lying, lying, forestallin’ truth

So no, don’t thank me for
Your death raining from the skies
For all them dead, dead boys, with wide open eyes
For thinking it might be better to dissolve in the mud and disappear and die
So don’t say anything at all, unless it’s to absolve
To end these goddam wars
Once and for all