"Defector" lyrics

The heard grows thin

Your father was a scorn filled alcoholic cop
And mother wasn't far behind
You were ripe for the adverse running
And so ready to defy the right
Your fashion was the anti-fashion approved
Your music was the latest whatever core trend
A tattooed body with a mind for rent
An adolescent iconoclast, iconoclast

Fall into the ranks aligned
Cattle-pressed pushed to the left
So anti-this and anti-that
That somewhere along the way you forgot to laugh

Taking every cause you could champion
You were an overnight political machine
You carried forth the flag of your elders
And quoted Marx for the class-bound breed
Throwing rocks through the corporate windows
Great destroyer of the economic lie
You got one more year for the oppressed
And a lifetime to be all you once despised

With career opportunities
The tidal waves of pressure mount
Reality is one hard blow
So you gave back your "scene card" and checked out

You had a dream once, but now its sold
Assets, equity, financial gain?
All of your protests, all of the unrest
Gone like a song, never to be heard again
Dead end workdays? remember what you hoped
What you always thought you'd be?

How does it feel to reject it
Walk away, then run?
To turn your back and trample
All of them into the ground?

Birth begets life begets death