We can’t understand every stranger we meet
And furious waves destroy planes in the East
While back in the West the clock strikes the hour
And sometimes I think that my hands are on fire.
Where choice starving people want a free president
The army fights back and follows the precedent
That gave us a plaque where we once had two towers
And sometimes I think that my hands are on fire.
While grown-ups grow hushed about screaming asylums
Their children grow up dreaming in Bedlam
Looking for fairies behind folded flowers
And sometimes I think that my hands are on fire.
As a conservative man preaches border control
His wife remembers youth when she learned to roll
R’s in a family that balanced cultures on wires
And sometimes I think that my hands are on fire.
And though where I’m sitting the clouds are still white
And no one has called me to stand up and fight
To my close friends the situation’s not dire
Still sometimes I think that my hands are on fire.