Roy Harper
October Twelfth
Why throw flowers on my grave when I'm dead?
Why paint pictures with the blood that I shed?
Why try to copy any word of what I said
When I hated you all when I was living?

Why do I waste time trying to create?
Why do I still try to communicate?
When you do nothing save coagulate
Making bad pretenses of pretending?

Why d'you just sit around counting the days?
Why do you act in so many fickle ways?
Why does it have to take all your types to make this world rotate
When almost all of you are hardly breathing?

And who can tell me what religion is for?
And which idiot thinks that irreligion is any more
Than just another product of that same religious sorе
That flows through time as through a retching body?

And how can you ban the bomb without first you ban thе war?
How can you ban the war without first you ban the peace?
Why does someone talk of peace and someone else of war
When each one is a product of the other?

And how many immortals did you ever see?
And how many gods do you think there can be?
And how much leaning post d'you need before you find the tree
Is dead and just about to fall upon you?
How do you go through living without seeing yourself?
And how can you see yourself by searching someone else
And keeping someone's nightmare of a place he labelled 'hell'
Not knowing how to live life without fearing?

You teach the children fear to gain some easy applause
Instead of teaching fact, you feed them all on Santa Claus
Slowly their poor minds are disillusioned by your laws
Is goodness hard to come by without lying?

Why do I sit here and sing you this song?
Why have I worried about people for so long?
I think you're all right and it's me that's all wrong
And I hated myself when I was living

And how do I sit here and sing you this song?
Why have I worried about people for so long?
I think you're all right and it's me that's all wrong
And I hated myself when I was living

I think you're all right and it's me that's all wrong
And I hated myself when I was living
And I hated myself when I was living
And I hated myself when I was living
And I hated myself when I was living