From the recording Rains 1
This line that came to my head and I knew it was a refrain that had to become a song, around the time I saw a video of the Syrian war. Almost every place in the video I had visited in 1985. All were completely destroyed like from post nuclear holocaust nightmare. This was reality. I was there under Assad senior, and it was a scary place then. We were followed everywhere. The man who picked us up at the airport (a German secret service agent) was killed by the military in a staged accident. The exact accident happened to my partner's parents a month later, but they had just imported a Volkswagon Gulf, and were saved by the airbags. The car was totalled. But the Syrian people were nice. They would give you the best of whatever little they had. Strangely, they reminded me of people from the American mid-west--generous, welcoming. Take you into their homes. And the homes and lives of all those people were obliterated. Homs was a picturesque village we went to visit. We found it on a brochure. But when we got there, there was nothing, except for a sign. Assad senior had the entire town obliterated, 10,000 people, and the village ploughed down, and paved over and let the desert reclaim it. Someone in the village had blown up a meeting in which 180 of his generals were killed. He got his revenge. Ant that's just one kind of hell touched on in this song calling us all to keep trying to make things better, --don't chase false peace or profit, because there ain't none when there's all this pain.
Lyrics
Ain’t No Peace In All This Pain
© Roman Rhodes, 2014
There ain’t no peace in all this pain.
Ain’t no dry eyes in this hard falling rain.
Ain’t no happiness when you take again and again.
Ain’t no healing less we change.
The bombs keep falling from hell to Homs.
The world keeps rolling on as if nothing is wrong.
We gawk on the web and sing our empty songs.
But you can’t feel at peace in all this pain.
Chorus:
Come on rains and wash it all away.
Don’t know if I can take another day.
Really want to run and hide away,
But that don’t solve a thing, so I’ll stay
And help make this world green again.
The plastic is piled in mountains and in seas;
Choking the rivers and bringing disease.
Yet we keep on consuming and producing as we please.
But there ain’t no plenty in all this pain.
Millions go hungry, though food is in excess.
The corporations expand, compounding this whole mess.
They pat their patented backs, amazed at their success.
But there ain’t no profit in all this pain.
Bridge:
Ain’t no pride in all this shame.
Ain’t no true happiness with so many in pain.
Ain’t no drying out in this hard falling rain.
Ain’t no peace in all this pain.
The pharmas push drugs while pointing fingers at weed.
Push poisons on the poot, when laws curb their greed.
Sicken all the people with fake goods and false needs.
Ah, there ain’t no magic pill in all this pain.
Repeat Chorus, end bridge+
Hope to wash clean in this hard falling rain.