All the Good Men are Dead

All the good men are dead

Removed from our reckoning by the lies they told

And by the punishment of their own conniving spirits

The same that drove them to avarice and to greed

That caused them to take, to steal from their own selves.

Condemned by cowardice and by dread;

The terror that cased them in previous times

To maintain their murderous silence

On those dreadful days when evil

And the sins of our long dead fathers

Came alive in our cities and towns and villages,

In burnt churches and looted mosques,

Murdered youth and embezzled dreams

In a million countrymen left refugees

In the land they helped build and will now die for,

Their widowed mothers left behind

To tend in harsh, desolate, lonely silence

The graves of the ones they loved

Right there in the places where before

They grew yams and tomatoes and those little onions

The kind that make grown men cry

All the good men are dead

Is that what you would have us believe?

In this hallowed land of ours

Where the grass grows a luscious green always,

Except for the places where martyred blood

Hath turned the earth a dirty, sad red

And the blue skies stay blue, even when the dark plumes

Of smoke from the burning streets drift into sight

To cover the vistas and shade the heavens from view

If what you say is true, that all the good men are dead

What then will happen to our living children

And to the ones still to come?

If all the good men are dead, and there is none left

To deliver us from this sordid existence,

What then are we living for?

If all the good men are dead,

What the hell my friend are you still doing here?