The first day of school was always the hardest   The first day of school, the hallways the darkest   Like a gauntlet   the voices haunted   Walking in with his thin skin, lowered chin   He knew the names that they would taunt him with   Faggot, sissy, punk, queen, queer   Although he'd never had sex in his 15 years   And when they harassed him it was for a reason   And when they provoked him it became open season   for the fox and the hunter, the sparks and the thunder   that pushed the boy under, then pillage and plunder   It kind of makes you wonder   how one can hurt another   But dehumanizing the victim makes things simpler   It's like breathing with a respirator   It eases the conscience of even the most conscious   and calculating violator   Words can reduce a person to an object,   something more easy to hate   An inanimate entity, completely disposable,   no problem to obliterate      But death is the silence   in this language of violence   Death is the silence   But death is the silence   in this cycle of violence   death is the silence   It's tough to be young, the young long to be tougher   When we pick on someone else it might make us feel rougher   Abused by their fathers but was at home though   so to prove to each other that they were not homos   The exclamation of the phobic fury   executioner, judge and jury   The mob mentality, individuality was nowhere   Dignity forgotten at the bottom of a dumb old dare and a numb cold stare   On the way home it was back to name calling   Ten against one they had his back up against the wall and   they reveled in their laughter as they surrounded him   But it wasn't a game when they up jumped and grounded him   They picked up their bats with their muscles straining   and they decided they were gonna beat this fella's brain in   with an awful, powerful, showerful, an hour full of violence   Inflict the strictest brutality and dominance   They didn't hear him screaming, they didn't hear him pleading   They ran like cowards and left the boy bleeding   in a pool of red 'til all tears were shed   and his eyes quietly slid into the back of his head   dead...      [But death is the silence   in this language of violence   Death is the silence   But death is the silence   in this cycle of violence   death is the silence      You won't see the face 'til the eyelids drop   You won't hear the screaming until it stops      The boy's parents were gone and his grandmother had raised him   She was mad she had no form of retaliation   The pack didn't have to worry about being on a hitlist   But the thing they never thought about was that there was a witness   to this senseless crime, right place wrong time   Tried as an adult one of them was gonna do hard time      The first day of prison was always the hardest   The first day of prison, the hallways the darkest   Like a gauntlet   the voices haunted   Faggot, sissy, punk, queen, queer   Words he used before had a new meaning in here   As a group of men in front of him, laughing, came near   for the first time in his life the young bully felt fear   He'd never been on this side of the name calling   Five against one they had his back up against the wall and   he had never questioned his own sexuality   but this group of men didn't hesitate in their reality   with an awful, powerful, showerful, an hour full of violence   Inflict the strictest brutality and dominance   They didn't hear him screaming   They didn't hear him pleading   They took what they wanted and then just left him bleeding in the corner   The giant reduced to Jack Horner   But dehumanizing the victim makes things simpler   It's like breathing with a respirator   It eases the conscience of even the most conscious   and calculating violator   The power of words, don't take it for granted   when you hear a man ranting   Don't just read the lips, be more sublime than this   Put everything in context, is this a tale of rough justice   in a land where there's no justice at all ?   Who is really the victim? Or are we all the cause, and victim of it   all?      But death is the silence   in this language of violence   Death is the silence   But death is the silence   in this cycle of violence   death is the silence      You won't see the face 'til the eyelids drop   You won't hear the screaming until it stops   You won't see the face 'til the eyelids drop   You won't hear the screaming until it stops