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 hard-won soft furniture, fought-for fast food

Defended end table that holds paperbacks and back U.S. News

The mind turns an itch into a bruise

And the hands start to twitch when 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 its eyes

But the mind wants to learn of some truth that might be inside reported crimes

So they found a lieutenant killed a village of kids

After finishing off the wives, he wiped off his knife and 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

Well, please take the time to make your heart my home

Where I’m forgiven by time

Where I’m cushioned by hope

Where I’m numbed by long drives

Where I’m talked off or doped

Does the heart wants to atone?

Oh, I believe that it’s so

'Cause if I could climb back through time

I’d restore their lives and then give back my own

Tens of times now its 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

Till at dinnertime when you look into her eyes

Lit by evening sun — that, as usual, comes from above that straight,

unbroken line

The horizon — its rising seems 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