Rush Album

An ill wind comes arising
Across the cities of the plain
There's no swimming in the heavy water-
No singing in the acid rain
Red alert
Red alert

It's so hard to stay together
Passing through revolving doors
We need someone to talk to
And someone to sweep the floors-
Incomplete
Incomplete

The world weighs on my shoulders
But what am I to do?
You sometimes drive me crazy-
But I worry about you

I know it makes no difference
To what you're going through
But I see the tip of the iceberg-
And I worry about you...

Cruising under your radar
Watching from satellites
Take a page from the red book-
Keep them in your sights
Red alert
Red alert

Left and rights of passage
Black and whites of youth
Who can face the knowledge
That the truth is not the truth?
Obsolete
Absolute

Absalom

Suddenly-
You were gone
From all the lives
You left your mark upon

I remember-
How we talked and drank
Into the misty dawn
- I hear the voices
We ran by the water
On the wet summer lawn
- I see the foot prints
I remember-

- I feel the way you would
- I feel the way you would
Tried to believe
But you know it's no good
This is something
That just can't be understood
I remember-
The shouts of joy
Skiing fast through the woods
- I hear the echoes

I learned your love for life
I feel the way that you would
- I feel your presence
I remember-
I feel the way you would

All that we can do is just survive
All that we can do to help ourselves
Is stay alive...

Ragged lines of ragged grey
Skeletons, they shuffle away
Shouting guards and smoking guns
Will cut down the unlucky ones

I clutch the wire fence
Until my fingers bleed
A wound that will not heal-
A heart that cannot feel-
Hoping that the horror will recede
Hoping that tomorrow-
We'll all be freed

Sickness to insanity
Prayer to profanity
Days and weeks and months go by
Don't feel the hunger-too weak to cry

I hear the sound of gunfire
At the prison gate
Are the liberators here-
Do I hope or do I fear?
For my father and my brother-it's too late
But I must help my mother
Stand up straight...

Are we the last ones left alive?
Are we the only human beings

Part One of 'Fear'

Things crawl in the darkness
That imagination spins
Needles at your nerve ends
Crawl like spiders on your skin

Pounding in your temples
And a surge of adrenaline
Every muscle tense-
To fence
The enemy within

I'm not giving in
To security under pressure
I'm not missing out
On the promise of adventure
I'm not giving up
On implausible dreams-
Experience to extremes-
Experience to extremes

Suspicious-looking stranger
Flashes you a dangerous grin
Shadows across your window-
Was it only trees in the wind?

Every breath a static charge-
A tongue that tastes like tin
Steely-eyed outside to hide the enemy within...

To you-is it movement or is it action?
It is contact or just reaction?
And you-revolution or just resistance?
Is it living, or just existence?
eah, you-it takes a little more persistence

One humanoid escapee
One android on the run
Seeking freedom beneath
A lonely desert sun

Trying to change its program
Trying to change the mode-
Crack the code
Images conflicting
Into data overload

1-0-0-1-0-0-1
S.O.S
1-0-0-1-0-0-1
In distress
1-0-0-1-0-0

Memory banks unloading
Bytes break into bits
Unit One's in trouble
And it's scared out of its wits

Guidance systems break down
A struggle to exist-
To resist-
A pulse of dying power
In a clenching plastic fist...

It replays each of the days
A hundred years of routines
Bows its head and prays

A world of difference
A world so out of touch
Overwhelmed by everything
But wanting more so much-

Call it blind frustration
Call it blind man's bluff
Call each other names-
Your voices rude-your voices rough
Then you learn the lesson
That it's cool to be so tough

Handle with kid gloves
Handle with kid gloves
Then you learn the lessons
Taught in school won't be enough
Put on your kid gloves
Put on your kid gloves
Then you learn the lesson
That it's cool to be so tough

A world of indifference
Heads and hearts too full
Careless of the consequence
Of constant push and pull

Anger got bare knuckles
Anger play the fool
Anger wear a crown of thorns
Reverse the golden rule
Then you learn the lesson
That it's tough to be so cool

Handle with kid gloves
Handle with kid gloves
Then you learn the weapons
And the ways of hard-knock school
Put on your kid gloves
Put on your kid gloves
Then you learn the lesson

I see red
And it hurts my head
Guess it must be something
That I read

It's the color of your heartbeat
A rising summer sun
The battle lost or won
The flash to fashion
And the pulse to passion
Feels red
Inside my head
And truth is often bitter
Left unsaid
Said red red
Thinking about the overhead
The underfed

Couldn't we talk about something else instead?

We've got mars on the horizon
Says the national midnight star
(It's true)
What you believe is what you are
A pair of dancing shoes
The soviets are the blues
The reds
Under your bed
Lying in the darkness
Dead ahead

And the mercury is rising
Barometer starts to fall
You know it gets to us all
The pain that is learning
And the rain that is burning
Feel red
Still...go ahead
You see black and white
And I see red
Red

To live between a rock
And a hard place
In between time-
Cruising in prime time-
Soaking up the cathode rays

To live between the wars
In our time-
Living in real time-
Holding the good time-
Holding on to yesterdays...

You know how that rabbit feels
Going under your speeding wheels
Bright images flashing by
Like windshields towards a fly
Frozen in the fatal climb-
But the wheels of time-
Just pass you by...

Wheels can take you around
Wheels can cut you down

We can go from boom to bust
From dreams to a bowl of dust
We can fall from rockets' red glare
Down to "Brother can you spare-"
Another war-another waste land-
And another lost generation...

It slips between your hands
Like water
This living in real time
A dizzying lifetime
Reeling by on celluloid

Struck between the eyes
By the big-time world
Walking uneasy streets-
Hiding beneath the sheets-