Coda, Chuckie Campbell

Feels good
Feels like the morning after
Still dark outside
Sometime I just like to look up
Look up and ask myself

Verse 1, Chuckie Campbell

Are we waiting to be loved
or do we deserve it
or even at our worst
are we worth it,
I wonder nervous
We were young,
staring up at the stars,
burning light
punching holes in the blackness
pulsing hot like the beat of our hearts

Nothing here is real
in that infinite dark
and I can feel vibrating
like it's singing me songs
Maybe reach into the far beyond
extending my palm --
like our problems could be solved
by simply sharing our thoughts

I wander off into the night
searching for meaning in life
revisiting every feeling
too difficult to hide
Approaching from behind
the memories left inside
the moon will be my magnet
manipulating the tide
I'm recounting in my mind
all the people who died,
either chasing an unchase-able high,
or fighting an unwinnable fight
in some unlivable life,
so consuming to consume it
its consumers commit suicide

Remind me of what it would take
for us to value human life,
treat each other human,
like the depths of this experience
were obvious and justified --
to let go of the pain
let go of the strain
on the outside
what looks different
somehow inside is the same
somehow we discover
something human in that space,
somehow it's our differences
we learn to celebrate,
ironically, it's love
that often shows us how to hate
to understand the heart breaks
uneven when it breaks

We navigate the human heart
as if it were a place
pin our feelings to the map
and learn the map is in the way
We're actors in a play
The world is our stage,
but performing human freedom
proves us prisoners of fate
The bully learns to bully
feeling bullied and afraid;
the player learns to play
from the hurt of being played;
the addict forms his habit
trying to take away the pain --
trapped within this cycle
reciprocity expires
the participants required
are a master and a slave

Who are you today?
And who are you to say?

when you kick it with these people
who don't recognize they're chained,
who raise their hand to talk
and only stand in line to wait,
who speak about their dreams,
but do nothing but complain --
The trick behind the dream
is they're dreaming their awake
and I'm sick of the excuses
and the comments and the blame
I'm sick of staying silent
trying to hold in all this rage
in this xenophobic, homophobic
nation full of hate

Listen.

I don't have the answers
and don't want to just complain,
don't think a simple rap song
could wash away the pain,
the echoes of expression
in dynamic interplay,
but I refuse to let you
hurt the ones I love
and walk away

I'll fight for what I love
until you put me in my grave
For every man you treat as less,
every cause has an effect,
every action a reaction
to reciprocate that pain --
What's that really mean now
in these United States?

Conservatives are stupid,
racist, or insane?
Liberals are cucks
or liberal snowflakes?
What do you accomplish
by calling these people names?
It's just another cycle
instructing us who to blame,
just another code
reminding us who to hate

The natives here were killed
or systematically contained;
Texas once was Mexico
'til Mexicans were slain;
the Chinese built our railroads
for beneath a living wage;
Japanese in concentration camps;
the Africans were slaves,
and no matter how much history
you wash or just erase,
by denying or ignoring
these events have taken place,
it furthers a divide
by trying to wish the pain away
Instead of dealing with the problem,
we slap on a band aid,
treat the minor symptoms,
while the sickness still remains,
spread it like a virus
through the sacred and profane
With no foreseeable future
or solutions now to date,
the least that we can do
is admit that it's man made.

That very revelation
reveals an important thing:
we could make a different world
but we love the one we've made
with the anger and the killing
and the greed it undetakes
I'm weary and I'm tired
I'm feeling some type of way
I walk the city streets
and stare at the cityscapes,
listen to darkness and ask it to explain --

Are we waiting to be loved
or do we deserve it
or even at our worst
are we worth it,
I wonder nervous
We were young,
staring up at the stars,
burning light
punching holes in the blackness
pulsing hot like the beat of our hearts

Yo, your love is real
Don't let'em tell you it's not
and I can feel it vibrating
like it's singing me songs
I can feel it vibrating
like it's singing me songs...
Yo, I feel it vibrating
like it's singing me songs...
the morning after