Darkness at the break of noon   Shadows even the silver spoon   The handmade blade, the child's balloon   Eclipses both the sun and moon   To understand you know too soon   There is no sense in trying.      Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn   Suicide remarks are torn   From the fool's gold mouthpiece   The hollow horn plays wasted words   Proves to warn   That he not busy being born   Is busy dying.      Temptation's page flies out the door   You follow, find yourself at war   Watch waterfalls of pity roar   You feel to moan but unlike before   You discover   That you'd just be   One more person crying.      So don't fear if you hear   A foreign sound to your ear   It's alright, Ma, I'm only sighing.      As some warn victory, some downfall   Private reasons great or small   Can be seen in the eyes of those that call   To make all that should be killed to crawl   While others say don't hate nothing at all   Except hatred.      Disillusioned words like bullets bark   As human gods aim for their mark   Made everything from toy guns that spark   To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark   It's easy to see without looking too far   That not much   Is really sacred.      While preachers preach of evil fates   Teachers teach that knowledge waits   Can lead to hundred-dollar plates   Goodness hides behind its gates   But even the president of the United States   Sometimes must have   To stand naked.      An' though the rules of the road have been lodged   It's only people's games that you got to dodge   And it's alright, Ma, I can make it.      Advertising signs that con you   Into thinking you're the one   That can do what's never been done   That can win what's never been won   Meantime life outside goes on   All around you.      You lose yourself, you reappear   You suddenly find you got nothing to fear   Alone you stand with nobody near   When a trembling distant voice, unclear   Startles your sleeping ears to hear   That somebody thinks   They really found you.      A question in your nerves is lit   Yet you know there is no answer fit to satisfy   Insure you not to quit   To keep it in your mind and not fergit   That it is not he or she or them or it   That you belong to.      Although the masters make the rules   For the wise men and the fools   I got nothing, Ma, to live up to.      For them that must obey authority   That they do not respect in any degree   Who despise their jobs, their destinies   Speak jealously of them that are free   Do what they do just to be   Nothing more than something   They invest in.      While some on principles baptized   To strict party platform ties   Social clubs in drag disguise   Outsiders they can freely criticize   Tell nothing except who to idolize   And then say God bless him.      While one who sings with his tongue on fire   Gargles in the rat race choir   Bent out of shape from society's pliers   Cares not to come up any higher   But rather get you down in the hole   That he's in.      But I mean no harm nor put fault   On anyone that lives in a vault   But it's alright, Ma, if I can't please him.      Old lady judges watch people in pairs   Limited in sex, they dare   To push fake morals, insult and stare   While money doesn't talk, it swears   Obscenity, who really cares   Propaganda, all is phony.      While them that defend what they cannot see   With a killer's pride, security   It blows the minds most bitterly   For them that think death's honesty   Won't fall upon them naturally   Life sometimes   Must get lonely.      My eyes collide head-on with stuffed graveyards   False gods, I scuff   At pettiness which plays so rough   Walk upside-down inside handcuffs   Kick my legs to crash it off   Say okay, I have had enough   What else can you show me?      And if my thought-dreams could be seen   They'd probably put my head in a guillotine   But it's alright, Ma, it's life, and life only.