From the recording Psych Ward
During Lockdown I read an article about a pro-Trump rally. Among banners saying ‘My Body My Choice’, ‘My Rights Don’t End Where Your Fear Begins’, ‘My Body, My Choice’ and ‘Socialism Sucks’, one in particular struck me. It said ‘Jesus is My Vaccine’. I felt that Jesus might have wept at this and the individualistic view of life it implies. And that was the genesis of the song. The album version—but not the radio edit—contains a tribute to a woman who, by contrast, valued compassion and respect for others. This is what the song tries to speak up for.
Lyrics
Forget respect
Just build the reservation
Give it a century,
They’ll see democracy’s cool
Down in Dakota
The Cheyenne guard their borders
To keep the plague away
Though white men still rule
‘My rights don’t end where your fear begins’
Raised high on a placard so you won’t forget
‘Socialism sucks’— talking straight’s how you win
‘Jesus is my vaccine’ …Jesus wept
.
Dignity gets hit
By false accusation
Black man on the tarmac
Well, you know the West is still wild
‘Obamagate’—
It almost sounds like reason
Sea-beasts choke on plastic
While humans self-defile
‘Sacrifice the weak’: get the bars and arenas open
‘We need our sports’— the nanny state over-protects
The elderly make no valid contribution
‘Jesus is my vaccine’…Jesus wept
Who needs experts
At the fake news factory
‘My language is precise’
That old flunky Wordsworth said
A president wonders
How bleach could be injected
But what can raise the living up
From the living dead?
Pity hears them saying ‘my body my choice’
Virtue stands in the torchlight shivering wet
‘Work makes us free’ or it can bind us in chains
‘Jesus is my vaccine’ …Jesus wept
What is truth he said and dried his hands
Nothing good or bad that money can’t make better
Voices jangling in the wind like flagpole ropes
If she gets too difficult my son, then just forget her
I knew a woman
Delicate as starlight
Kindness fell from her hands
Her heart never gave in
When she was old her body
Bent like the questions
I carry in my troubled blood
Along with my sins.
Between day and night are all the rainbow’s colours
Blue sky drops acid rain on writhing city streets
In lonely rooms big crowds fill the screens with chanting
‘Jesus is my vaccine’ …Jesus weeps