There's a purple heart on the stars and stripes tonight It's pinned to the chest of the latest liar And if you try to speak your mind They tell you keep it to yourself You got friends in the armed forces They wanna know which side you're on Doesn't matter cause we'll all be off To train, to fight Disregard our human rights To play the part The conscience of the damned You say you're defending me I'm sick of tying yellow ribbons Praying not to see Another folded flag to a mourning mother He was an army of one but they'll find another And in the fold of the body bag Somebody check for a heart You got friends in the armed forces Now we know what a soldier costs It's the cost of the rest of us To take a life We all have our price The wife and kids sleep soundly in their beds
You say you're defending me I'm untying yellow ribbons On every single tree I see They'll float like bu*terflies back home And I can feel the desert's heat When you're standing next to me Friendship offers no relief Stay with me now, just hear me out Don't want to lose you to that great black cloud Coming down You see in the path a bullet makes When it calls you by your name And the medic can't play the rhythm of your heart So it starts to fade like footsteps in the march The parade pa**es by our fingertips As lives once were right To change our minds Everything that's wrong looks right The lives we lead Are somewhere in between You say you're defending me I'm sick of tying yellow ribbons Praying not to see We're not going to hell To run rings around a wishing well