Hold our leaders. Hold our hearts, lest the yellow, black and green tears us apart. Hold the mongers and their credit cards. Ten thousand red berets will be the start.

So the writing’s on the wall. Raise a glass to mass confusion. Are we here at all? Dressed to the nines and still in love with our disaster, one that’s three eras tall. Unionists and tyrants dressed in drag will tear us apart. Who do you turn to when the system’s breaking your heart? Mayday’s downtown on break singing “light bulbs, lust and a country we hate.” We all fall down. I can hear bombs. I can hear bombs. We’ll dance as the city burns. I can hear bombs. I can hear bombs. Another nosebleed revolution. Red light. Blue light. Nowhere’s in sight. Swallowing a calibre or running for your life. I can hear bombs. I can hear bombs. I can hear bombs. I can hear bombs. The rubber bullets taste like they can finally hear us. Tear gas and baton bouquets. The teenagers mix paint and PW broke his finger. I’m sure we’ll all be okay. The junkies slow dance with your daughters to your least-favourite song. I found a necklace in the Congress’ guide to getting along. Here’s four for you, one for me and one for dear Democracy. We all fall down. I can hear bombs. I can hear bombs. We’ll dance as the city burns. I can hear bombs. I can hear bombs. Another nosebleed revolution. Red light. Blue light. Nowhere’s in sight. Swallowing a calibre or running for your life. I can hear bombs. I can hear bombs. I can hear bombs. I can hear bombs.

Daddy’s little LSD princess is dressed to kill in her middle-class prowess. Dumb, delicious and dedicated to fucking with your head. All hail reality TV and oscillating to sticky-end ecstasy. Baby, you’re no soapbox beauty but you’re way too easy. There’s no way out, when you get neck-deep in it. The high-end killed the class pretence and the leveller is dead. Fuck no, I don’t want to dance to no electro. I won’t move along because your tabloid deity said so. A trend, a lie, taking tithe. Your 21st century is a fucking lie. The health club hero is a spendthrift. Excess is just the way she likes it. Godless and vacant, he’s got nothing in his head. Down by the watering-hole of VD - No, sir, no rubber coat for me! She’ll take the drinks, the ride and the rainfall if it’s free. There’s no way out when you get dick-deep in it. The high-end killed the class pretence and the leveller is dead. Fuck no, I don’t want to dance to no electro. I won’t move along because your tabloid deity said so. A trend, a lie, taking tithe. Your 21st century is a fucking lie. Let them eat cake.

I’m just a credit card/antibiotic/candid laughter away from taking a 9mm approach to how I feel about Mondays. Missy miscarried a saviour, maybe power lines and pre-nups weren’t best for baby. The best approach to getting by is not saying a word. Here’s to the age of tumour towns. Here’s to the age of breaking down. Here’s to the time of lights and sounds. I’m just a natural disaster/celebrity scandal away from letting the shadows paint the prettiest pictures with my brains on the ceiling. Maybe they’ll find a cure and save us from everything the ones before us gave us. The profit margin won’t be green so I can’t be sure. Here’s to the age of tumour towns. Here’s to the age of breaking down. Here’s to the time of lights and sounds. Fuck you.

I am war. I am peace. I am the xenophobe and the refugee. I’m inconsistency. I am the bulwark of the middle-east. I am the Semite playing hide-and-seek. I’m Little Boy’s legacy. Honest to God, I can’t tell the truth. I’m the alpha-orator, here to mislead you. I’m the reverend father pacing the pews. I’m the old sins and the new. I’m not a communist. I am all the things your mother said. I am the stranger in your father’s bed. I’m the voices in your head. I’m the genocide, the old divide, the plan B pills and the suicide. The eulogy and lullaby. As hopeless as virtue, as beloved as war. If this is our prize, what was ’76 for? A necklace a day kept the traitor away, let Liberty hear you say “I’m not a communist.”

Trust your television screen! It disregards transparency, the pictures dancing to the score of the yellow, black and green. Here’s a drink to outlast bigotry and abandon your sobriety. Their favourite part of being “free” is owning you and me. The room encores for “democratic, with a twist!” The breadline, for the first time, is within reach. A hammer and a sickle, a machete and a kiss. Your X right here for late RDP’s and Viva la Illiteracy! Sing a song for a king that you’ll never meet, on his anodyne of alcohol and retail therapy. Comrades we will be. Sing a song for an age that you’ll never see, I’ll sing for you and you for me. Sheep we’ll always be – c’est la vie. Economy! Economy! Border control? Security? If the neighbours wear their welcome out, it’s xenophobic you and me. Just one big happy family – our boisterous sibling rivalry need not reach the evening news nor acquire notoriety. But where’s Reggie now? Now, when regicide’s the key to a 6-feet under autocrat who rufied liberty? An electorate all-for policies of apathy. Your X right here for the colour Red and the way things weren’t supposed to be. Sing a song for a king that you’ll never meet, on his anodyne of alcohol and retail therapy. Comrades we will be. Sing a song for an age that you’ll never see, I’ll sing for you and you for me. Sheep we’ll always be - c'est la vie.

Russian roulette for all five beds because you’ll discover that el presidente much prefers many playing together. There is no ladder quite like nepotical delight. I can’t seem to shake the blame for dad not being colour-blind. Amandla! Awethu! Amandla’s here – now where to? Your sins are legion for your sins are far too many. Long live the King, his convertibles and Charlie. Mould me to Stalingrad, a purge is fun I’m yet to have. A garden-variety IQ – just like we promised you. Amandla! Awethu! Amandla’s here – now where to?

Post-haste to palsy, I’d say that something’s terribly wrong. Light up the sky with a god complex, bad bills and nuclear bombs. I can’t find a place for an empire, let alone a place for my head. Kings are dead. The third world must be content. A podium finish is not bad. There’s always a market for therapy and a franchise to be had. I’m always crushing on secret police and the Molotovs taste too sweet. Kings are dead.

Lights on but like you guessed, nobody’s home. We haven’t played “family” for so long. He knew all along that his pastimes were wrong but paracetamol’s strong, and she’s exceeding dosage several times a day. String the kids along in the divorcee’s parade. He’s getting away with all the games he plays but what’s the cost of it all? And she’d always say “don’t go worrying about the politics because you know that nine in ten are hypocrites. You’ll be ousted, even by heretics but you can always come home. Home will always be what you need it to be.” This red room, so you’ll never forget that hearts and beds weren’t made to shared. None of the photographs or journal entries say ”Christine miscarried today.” Still, we lose composure several times a day. Six stray hearts that hide it all away. What they wouldn’t give for just another day, a day to hear you say: “don’t go worrying about the politics because you know that nine in ten are hypocrites. You’ll be ousted, even by heretics.” I don’t want to go home. Home without Christine isn’t home to me.

Now it’s the city’s turn to watch the city burn. Television dinner and nine to five concerns. Hello? Is this thing on? Are we queuing for dreams or bygones? For point road’s lambs and point road’s cons: prescription pills and siren songs. Some days, we handle it. Others, we hollow out window panes. All signs read “the wrong way.” I guess we’re in limbo again. Administration, excuses extraordinaire! Minimum wage and tax and fear. A thousand traffic lights, repetition certified. So long, signed “a working class suicide.” And at corruption’s height, the patriots catch alight. This place is paradise if the pigment’s right. Protest lives on in dance and song, it’s written onto the face of our icons. World, can’t you see? We get along – and change the bills that say we’re wrong. Some days, we handle it. Others, we hollow out window panes. All signs read “the wrong way.” I guess we’re in limbo again. Administration, excuses extraordinaire! Minimum wage and tax and fear. A thousand traffic lights, repetition certified. So long, signed “a working class suicide.”

No forty-five or medicine for the mess that’s in your head. There’s no way out of a made-up place, as far as we can relate. I’m too sorry, and you’re too naked for even you to see. Caustic and faithless, broken and vacant but as long as you’re still you - then I’m still me. You’re all sedatives and stimulants and your temperament can’t keep up. How many sleepless days will show the nights that you haven’t had enough? Dear aspirin disciple, the black, blue and brown will lose angst and then fade away. The lustre of comfort absent here just means that you’ll never have to say “I’m not okay.” Bruise me.

Four years and I can’t face the old me, holding your frame, shaking and brittle and silent. Of all the thought-worth things, the one I hate to believe – your sightless eyes tried to fight it. Somehow, you’d be less okay seeing these stray hearts go their separate ways. Sleep Christine. Under these bright lights watched by these curious eyes, even my demons fall quiet. Was life in early, or late? I break, I spit and I hate. I’ve no scars as my skin denies it. You’d be less okay seeing these stray hearts go their separate ways. Sleep Christine.

Oblivious to the life and times, Reggie learns what it means to bleed. Hey stranger! How you been, besides lost since 17? I hear you failed your dad and your mom’s not here to see her last-born’s dreams descending to schedule six dependence. Reggie, there are far worse things than these months of atrophy. Hold but a light up to the places that you’ll never see. Let go of all the shadows that ever promised sympathy. Seizures, false solace and the small white pills could never say quite how it feels inside now that Christine’s gone away. I lost my heart on the M1-South. From the Table to the Ponte, dance-riots clothe the streets. Democracy’s beloved, wide-eyed in disbelief. And here, the guilty sleep. Dreamless and down six feet. I’m the oldest kind of threat with the newest ways to not concede. I’d burn this city to the ground for just another chance to give oncoming trucks a saviour of a second glance. I’d pull this trigger long before I have the guts to say, that in spite of guardian angels, Christine died today. I lost my heart on the M1-South. A whiskey for the demons and a red room for the thoughts. The lot of them go on as though they saw her neck give way – and someone took the pictures down. Clearly, home won’t always be what you need it to be. “A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over will be poured into your lap.” I fucking hate it here. Let the shadows of the house come and get me. Let the shadows of my mind have me too. Let the shadows in my heart tear the emptiness apart. Lord, I’m coming home to you. The Longmin game runs rampant. Nkandla won’t stop growing. Malema’s seven shades of twat and the blue-collars swallow it whole. Red berets are on the up. Tata’s heart monitor sat down. I’m sure we’ll all be okay. Just bombs and cancer and cake. Here’s to you. Come all ye faithful, all the hopeless and the hungry. No time to waste, come acclimate to change. Preferably in single-file, hands tightly bound, from shanty towns to laurel crowns – a vengeful majority in a post-prejudicial age. Sing “hey, hallelujah!” We’ll get our two-thirds arsenal through you and then see just how much you’ll take. Reason, show them – we’re on a road to nowhere. This city is insecure. The arsonists and terrorists are heroes are to the deaf and dumb, because if the Union Building is burning down – how is fire the cure? I pledge allegiance to the congress, I pledge allegiance to the flag. Sounds the call to come unconscious, united we won’t stand. Let us live and strive for freedom, well, the version they command. Keep us silent and confused, in Nowhereville, our land. Sing “hey, hallelujah!” We’ll get our two-thirds arsenal through you and then see just how much you’ll take. Reason, show them – we’re on a road to nowhere. This city is insecure. The arsonists and terrorists are heroes are to the deaf and dumb, because if the Union Building is burning down – how is fire the cure? So as long we raise our hands to heaven, sing songs of AK-47’s, we’ll not realize that all our fathers made were sons who bow to hand grenades. The farm murders aren’t understood. Our icons go to sleep for good. Realize that all our fathers made were sons who bow to hand grenades. A little less significant. The hunger pangs have me wearing thin and there isn’t space out here for dreaming. A lot more give than take. Show them your heart can’t break and maybe they’ll stop trying. And Liberty has nightmares still, since he called her in against her will. Now, she bows her head, smokes cigarettes and takes the morning after pill. Hier skryf en skree ons nou om teen die sterflikheid te probeer verskans. En ons vir jou, nooit weer nie. Nowhereville is burning down. The Union Building’s burning down. Everything is burning down, burning down all around me. Christine, can you hear me now that you’re far away? I can’t feel you shaking. You’d leave me if only you could see me thinking of myself again. I lost my heart on the M1-South.