Andrea Gibson, Bryan Wagstaff - Etiquette Leash lyrics

I want a good heart
I want it to be made of good stuff
I want the stain glass window builder
To be my drinking buddy
I want to drink only the
Punch of a million genderqueer
Schoolkids taking free martial arts
Lessons to survive recess
I stopped calling myself a pacifist
When I heard Gandhi told
Women they should not physically
Fight off their rapists
I believe there is such a
Thing as a non-violent fist
I believe the earth is
A woman muzzled, beaten
Tied to the cold slinging tracks
I believe the muzzled have every
Right to rip off the bible Belt and take it
To the patriarchy's ass
I know these words are going


To get me in trouble
It is never polite to throw back the tear gas
Just like it's never polite to
Bring enough life rafts
They crowd the balconies where the
Wealthy shine their jewels
But sometimes love sometimes real love
Is fucking rude
Is interrupting a wedding mid-vow just as
The congregation is about to cry
To stand up in your pew to say "is
Everyone here clear on how
Diamonds are mined?"
Hallelujah to every drag queen
At Stonewall who
Made weapons out of her stiletto shoes
Hallelujah to the Blues keeping
The neighborhood awake
To the activist standing in the snow outside
Of the circus holding a ten foot
Photograph of a baby elephant in chains when
It's probably some little kid's birthday
Hallelujah to making everyone uncomfortable
To the terrible manners of truth
To refusing to clean the blood off the plate
Bend this spine into a bow I can pull
Across the cello of my speak up
Love readies it's heart's teeth
Chews through the etiquette leash
Takes down the cellphone tower after millions
Of people die in wars
In the Congo fighting for the
Minerals that make our cellphones
Love blows up the dam
Chains it'self to the redwood tree
To the capitol building when a
Trailer of Mexican immigrants
Are found dead on the south Texas roadside
Love insists well intentioned white people
Officially stop calling themselves colorblind
Insists hope lace it's fucking boots
Always calls out the misogynist, racist
Homophobic joke refuses to be a welcome mat
Where hate wipes it's feet
Love asks questions at the
Most inappropriate times
Overturns the Defense of Marriage
Act then walks
A pride parade asking when the
Plight of poor single mothers will ignite
Our hearts into action like that
Love is not polite
Deadlocks our rush hour traffic with
A hundred stubborn screaming bikes
Hallelujah to every suffrage
Movement hunger strike
Hallelujah to insisting they get
Your pronouns right
Hallelujah to tact never winning our spines
To taking our power all the way back to that
First glacier that had to learn how to swim
To not turning our heads from
A single ugly truth to knowing we live in a
Time when beauty recruit's
It's models outside the doors
Of eating disorder clinics
That is not a metaphor
This is not a line to a poem
An Indian farmer walks into a crowd
Of people and stab himself
In his chest to protest the
Poisoning of his land
A Buddhist monk burns himself alive
On the streets of Saigon
A US soldier hangs himself
Wearing his enemy's
Dog tags around his holy neck
May my heart be as heavy as
A tuba in the front
Row of the Mardi Gras parade
Five months after Katrina
May it weigh the weight of the world so it
Might anchor the sun so it might hold
Me to my own light till I am willing
To sweat as much as I cry
Till I am willing to press into
The clay of our precious lives a window
Might our grace riot the walls down
May the drought howl us awake
May we rush into the streets to do
The work of opening each other's eyes
May our good hearts forever be too
Loud to let the neighbors sleep