The War Criminal Rises and Speaks

The War Criminal Rises and Speaks - Okkervil River

The heart wants to feel

The heart wants to hold

The heart takes past subway past stop and shop past

Beal's and calls it coming home

The heart wants a

Trail away from alone

So the heart turns a sale into a well worn

Milestone

The heart wants soft furniture

Fought for fast food

Defended end table that holds paperbacks and back us news

The mind turns an itch into a bruise

And the hands start to twitch and they're feeling ill

Used

But you're almost back now you can see by the signs

From the bank you tell the temperature and then the

Time and the billboard reads some headlines

The head wants to turn to avert both it's eyes

But the mind wants to learn of some truth that

Might be inside reported crimes

They found a lieutenant

Killed a village of kids

After finishing off the wives he wiped off his knife

That's what he did

And they're not claiming that there's any excusing it

That was thirty years back and they just get paid

For the facts the way they got them in

Now he's rising and not denying his hands are shaking

But he's not crying

And he's saying how did I climb out of a

Life so boring into that moment

Please stop ignoring the heart inside oh you readers at home

While you gasp at my bloody crimes please take the

Time make your heart home

Where I'm forgiven by time where I'm cushioned by hope

Numbed by long drives where I'm talked off or doped

The heart wants to atone oh I believe that it's so

Because if I could climb I'd restore

Their lives back my own

Tens of times now it's size on a far distant road

In a far distant time where every night I'm still

Crying entirely alone

But the news today always fades away as you drive by

Until at dinnertime when you look into her eyes

Lit by evening sun that as usual comes from above

That straight unbroken line

The horizon it's rising is a given

Just like your living

Your heart's warm and kind your mind is

Your own

So our blood spattered criminal is inscrutable don't worry he

Won't

Rise up behind your eyes and take wild control

Say he's not of this time

He fell out of a hole