This Could Be Anywhere

Cold concrete apartments
Rise up from wet black asphalt
Below them a few carcasses
Of the long gone age of privacy

It takes a scary kind of illness
To design a place like this for pay
Downtown's an endless generic mall
Of video games and fast food chains

One by one
The little houses are bricked up and condemned
A subtle hint to move
Before the rats move in

This could be anywhere
This could be everywhere
Those new kids at school seem cool
But dad says not to talk to them
Stick to your old friends
They're not our kind
So now there's lots of fights

So many people I know
Come of age tense and bitter-eyed
Can't create so they just destroy
C'mon!
Let's set someone's dog on fire

Empty plastic
Culture slum suburbia
Is a war zone now
Sprouting the kinds of gangs
We thought we'd left behind

This could be anywhere
This could be everywhere
Kids at school are taking sides
Along color and uniform lines
My dad's gone and bought a gun
He says he's fed up
With crime in this town
This could be anywhere
This could be everywhere
This could be anywhere
This could be everywhere
Anywhere
Everywhere
I hope I'm gone before it explodes
I linger late at night
Waiting for the bus
No amount of neon jazz
Could hide the oozing vibes of death
My dad's a vigilante now
He's bringing home these weird-ass friends
Like the guy who fires blanks at his TV
When Kojak's on
Or the guy who shows off his submachine gun
To his sixteen-year-old daughter's friends
Whose sense of pride and hope
Is being in the police reserve

This could be anywhere
This could be everywhere-Everywhere