Waiting For the Fall - David Rovics

Helicopter missiles launch

The ground rumbles

Apartment complex shakes

Just before it crumbles

Children scream and die

Wrong time, wrong place

A woman wears a shawl

That covers the scar upon her face

A boy looks through a pool of blood

And prays to see the day

When the armies of the infidels

Will once more go away

And everybody’s just

Waiting for the fall

Outside the Green Zone

Through the machine gun turrets

On the other side of the wall

The lights go out again

The city swelters in the heat

A thousand ghosts are weeping

Amid the pockmarked street

No food in the markets

You can’t reap grain that you can’t sow

A no-man's land the Red Cross

Doesn’t dare to go

A soldier shoots at everything

Acting like the master race

All the while wondering

What he’s doing in this place

And everybody’s just

Waiting for the fall

Outside the Green Zone

Through the machine gun turrets

On the other side of the wall

No gas in the gas tanks

Lines a mile long

A nation turned to rubble

Where everything’s gone wrong

Death squads roam the alleys

Looking for the eye

Of anyone who dares to say

A lie is just a lie

The torturers are torturing

In a prison cell

Flushing Korans down the toilet

Saying all praise be to Shell

And everybody’s just

Waiting for the fall

Outside the Green Zone

Through the machine gun turrets

On the other side of the wall

Humvee fires

Someone fires back

A sound that lets you know

You’re somewhere in Iraq

Surgeons with no medicine

Wonder what to do

And ask how things might be

If the outside world knew

And in an ivory tower in Texas

They’re toasting the New Year

Not knowing there’s a country

Far away from here

And everybody’s just

Waiting for the fall

Outside the Green Zone

Through the machine gun turrets

On the other side of the wall

Where everybody’s just…