Lyrics Sick Days Are Upon Us - Kill the Vultures

Sick Days Are Upon Us

Layers of scalp under manicured nails
And a matador stands in his death ballet
Cellos bellow like workers on break
Once devout to the catchers of prey
Seasons a day, hunters with tools
King of king need to hire a fool
To laugh and smile and wipe his drool
I slit his throat while he slept with his queen
The jester is me, the laughs of the creek
Smoking Newport’s and drinking the V
O them days, the woe to the sick
Could sleep through a war and wake when it ends
Make peace with the Lord, the priest and the Pope
The industry stole your ideas and eloped
The mind is simply a terrible thing
Applied to these eyes, born with a squint
We’re in the part of the country where the radio buzzes
But we don’t turn it off 'cause we fear the sound of nothing
Heat even makes a noise like bugs humming
Rubbing their legs together indicating hunger
It’s all around us
Like developing resentment between small-towners
Fall down as quick as you stand
Dehydration, hallucination, sicker than
A sick man licking his hand
React to the cricks in the thick of the land
Hear the stones sticks shifting again
Like old bones in a rickety man
I said we’re all destined for stomach rot
Sugar eats the teeth of crumbs that numb the plot
Of brittle hair hovering over their eyes
That don’t see nothing but culture’s disguise
I scan the room on a sick day
Looking for objects upon which to fixate
Sick days are upon us now
Sick days are upon us now
Sick days are upon us now
I tried to warn ‘em, teach ‘em even beg ‘em
Now the epidemic is spreading again
I walk with metal pipes for legs, unsettled life a dread and yellow nights
That bred unleveled types
Bled in rebel fights at bars in ghetto heights
Scars from Stiletto knives, stars were the devil’s eyes
Look at the meadow rise, making the town flood
Praising the brown mud and praying it drowns us
Fucked from the ground up, nobody comes 'round
Watch men floating up the river at sundown
Widows hold on to a blood stained sermon
Not ready to give husbands to the fire
Feeding a green corpse to prolong the burden
Lifting the limbs up with pulleys and wires
We’re walking dead not given proper burial
Cursing reptiles for the skin they can shed
Packing more bodies than a cemetery holds
Every time that it rains the streets are stained red
Turns my blood into blue ice
If I don’t tell my story, my tomb might
Hounds of hell with bloodstained tongues
Sound the bells when Sunday comes
Birds fall out the sky and hit hydrants
We only pray to God when we’re sick and dying
Everybody looking for the source of the plague
Maybe fleas from the rats or the sores on our hands
We now tell time by the cries in the air
Better off digging up coffins and hiding in there
Dead-bolt locked tight 'cross my door
Hear 'em clawing at the wood, fingernails on boards
Sick days are upon us now
Dear God please bring the tall winds down
Rid me of a never-ending night of decay
Everything that breeds illness upon this ground