Andrea Gibson - The Pursuit of Happiness lyrics

Tonight in Iraq, there is a race to rape little girls before they can be raped by U.S. soldiers Tonight in Iran, there is a missile aimed at the hill where Hafiz cut pieces of his soul with a knife and wove them into a blanket to protect us Tonight, my skin is the color of a hundred white flags torn apart at the seams and sewn together into the body bag that holds her only son And I am told God's will is don.e By hands that pan for gold in the bloodstreams of children while a million souls are sold on the slave blocks of a pipeline and a mother turns her bones into a bunker fills her lungs with sand and cradles her baby daughter until her own clavicle is blown to powder fine as the dust on a bu*terfly's wing But tonight there are no flowers Every flashing red light is a heart threatening to quit The moon is a tourniquet we will bleed through by morning Is this your pursuit of happiness? The casket as small as a music box A mother holding that song to her ear America, I dare to rest your holy water beside her tears and see where Jesus chooses to walk Heaven doesn't know your name Only the sound of you rolling your barrels of blood to its gates thinking grace is something you can buy with Mohammed's pulse Tell me again how you intend to rescue their women How you will teach them how to read in the schools you have turned to prisons How you will offer them doctors in the hospitals you have burned with their children inside Tell me how they won't have to hide beneath their burqas How you will wrap them in lace Until they are all as conveniently rapeable as women in the States Do you know how much desert sand is on the floor of the women's shelter of my city? Have you ever heard a skull crack on the kitchen sink? Have you ever tried to blink the light back? Do you know the man who beat her had been ordered to fit five Afghani children in a single body bag? Is this your pursuit of happiness? The orphanage you lit like a cigarette? You cough and it sounds like screams You cancel the soul with your holy flag You dog-tagged your son, Choke- chained his two years into eight, and forgot his name. When you couldn't afford the gas to drive to his funeral . Do you know how his family loved you? Their trust was an orchard Now tonight at their table nothing is alive but his empty chair If you are a nation under God, how is hell so close to your prayers? Do you see what you are pressing against your bones? Bones cannot break Into song A mother can never find the right place to store an empty cradle A mouth can never find the right shape to hold the lullabies it will never sing America, if you could rip the pipelines from your throat, if you could hang them like wind chimes from the battered night would you remember how freedom rings? Would you remember that every river is a lantern running without oil and your children sing your anthems so proud America. The beautiful. Remember? When you melted the desert, the sand became a mirror If you could stand so close the flames caught the lashes of your eyes If you could memorize one face fading into smoke and never ever forget If you could let one more soldier write his blood type on his boots Would you let your pursuit of happiness steal so much God from the heart that I know is still pounding beneath your bloody hands?