Album: Wounded Land (1993)

Consume To Live


living in the greenhouse growing crops that we can't eat
making money out of poverty turning forests into meat
we got our fingers on the trigger of some suicidal gun
the population's getting bigger underneath a dying sun
there's a fire in the furnace and there's nothing left to burn
buried waste has reached the surface is there nothing left to learn?

every day ozone getting layered every way life is getting worse
everybody's lung is getting cancer everyone has something more to lose
every country armies are rising every gene splitting into two
every breath monoxide getting stronger every sea whales are beached

economies are growing subsistence life is dead
we can't sustain this growth and things are coming to a head
we gotta learn to climb down the ladder of success
with two feet on the ground we gotta clean up all this mess
there's a fire in the furnace and there's nothing left to burn
buried waste has reached the surface is there nothing left to learn?

every life extinction is forever every town riots in the streets
every sky greenhouse is affecting every tree dying in the breeze
every plant chemical pollution every song relying on the beat
every lake water getting shorter every heart aching for release

surviving in a world of mass production we must all consume to live
our working lives to give and join the unemployment lines
when confidence is low

a man must try to sell his labour to the highest bid
keep his anger hid and try not to get pulled into
the vicious undertow

but even in the middle classes they fall into that hole
aspiring to that goal of rising from the yoke of
such an exploitative state

consume to live