Subdivision

song lyrics by Ani DiFranco

White people are so scared of black people,
they bulldoze out to the country and put up houses
on little loop-de-loop streets,
while America gets its heart cut right out of its chest,
the Berlin wall still runs down main street
separating east side from west, and nothing
is stirring, not even a mouse, in the boarded up stores
and the broken down houses, so they hang colorful banners
off all the street lamps just to prove they got manners.
No mercy, no sense and
I wonder what it will take for my city to rise.
First we admit our mistakes and then we open our eyes.
The ghosts of old buildings are haunting parking lots
in the city of good neighbors that history forgot.
I remember the first time I saw someone lying on the cold street,
I thought "I just can't walk past you, this just can't be true."
But I learned by example to just keep moving my feet.
It's amazing the things that we all learn to do.
So we're led by denial like lambs to the slaughter,
serving empires of style and carbonated sugar water
and the old farmroad's a four-lane that leads to the mall
and my dreams are all guillotines waiting to fall.
And I wonder what it will take for my country to rise.
First we admit our mistakes and then we open our eyes
'til nation's last taker succumbs to one last dumb decision
and America the beautiful is just one big subdivision.