THE BADLANDS

Where I come from, the canyons are wide
And the sun don't shine on the other side
Our land is so big, our skies are so blue
All of our churches and prisons are full

I come from the country of interstates
Big graveyards of ghost city ruins
Deserts and prairies and mountain towns
Where the cold wind blows right through you

The roads are hard where I come from
You have to get by on a dream
We try our best to hold onto the sky
Our hearts are as strong as our hands

Out here, the masters make the rules
They've pulled up the roots from the dirt
Now every time it rains out here
We sink deeper into the earth

The old gold roads have turned to dust
In our country, we are landless
American dust bowl wasteland blues
Soul rebels born from the badlands

But struggle, it has made us strong
In the mad wind and the rain
Our dreams so vivid, they've come alive
We carry them in our hands

There's a wildfire inside our hearts
And there's a rising wind
The fire we've been holding in
Will burn down everything

Weatherworn, our wills are strong
And greed has made them weak
Their hearts so hard, their hands so soft
With the short-sighted gaze of a thief

The things they rob, they never need
In the badlands, we share the take
The fool who chains his soul to gold
Will be nothing when it all falls away

The hard road tenders up the heart
And builds an iron will
The badlands captives with sacred hearts
Forged from Babylon steel

We cast our anchors to the sky
With not a place to land
Soul rebels with the inner fire
Free-falling through the canyonlands.