Day after tomorrow

[...]
They fill us full of lies, everyone buys
'bout what it means to be a soldier
I still do`nt know how I`m supposed to feel
'bout all the blood that`s been spilled
Will God on this throne
get me back home
on the day after tomorrow

You can`t deny, the other side
don`t wanna die anymore than we do
what i `m trying to say is don`t they pray
to the same God that we do?

and tell me how does god choose
whose prayers does he refuse?
who turns the wheel
who throws the dice
on the day after tomorrow

I`m not fighting for justice
I`m not fighting for freedom
I`m fighting, for my life
and another day in the world here

I just do what I`ve been told
We` re just the gravel on the road
and only the lucky ones come home
on the day after tomorrow

and the summer, it too will fade
and with it brings the winter`s frost dear
and i know we too are made
of all the things that we have lost here

I`ll be 21 today
I been saving all my pay
and my plane will touch down
on the day after tomorrow

Day After Tomorrow:
- TW (2004): "The government looks at these 18-year-old kids as shell casings, you know, like we're getting low on ammo, send in some more. We're neck deep in the big muddy and the big chief is telling us to push on and offer up our children. I sure wouldn't want to let my boys go." (Source: "Bard Of The Bizarre". Telegraph Magazine (UK). By Richard Grant)

- TW (2004): "If you write tunes or whatever. I guess that's all you really can do is put a human face on the war. These are MY feelings. You know I just tried to imagine a soldier writing home from ANYWHERE. This is your war you have lost, both sides have lost." (Source: "BBC Interview With Tom Waits." BBC Radio 4 (UK). October 4, 2004. By Mark Coles)

- TW (2004): Tom Waits pauses briefly to consider whether "Day After Tomorrow," which takes the form of a letter home from a soldier at the front, should be interpreted as anti-war in general, or anti-Bush in particular. In the end, he decides, it all comes to the same thing. "Bush calls himself a wartime president, so if you're anti-war you're anti-Bush and if you're anti-Bush you're anti-war," reasons Waits, during a recent phone interview. "I don't know whether he came in knowing he was a wartime president and said, `Well you know what, the only thing missing here is a war.' He's like a doctor who breaks your leg. And then comes in and fixes it for you." (Source: "Songs Of Decay From Waits." Toronto Star (Canada). October 5, 2004. By Vit Wagner)

- TW (2005): "Yeah just a soldier writing home to his family. Tried to make it so it's not really about necessarily this war that we're in now, the Iraq war, but in fact about any war really. Because I guess the letters home are probably the same. I think most of the soldiers are really like the gravel on the road. NS: What do you mean by that? TW: Well the gravel on the road that the others are driving on, you know? Spent shell casings." (Source: "Cool Ivories", American Routes radio show, by Nick Spitzer. February 16-22, 2002)

Day after tomorrow - Tom Waits
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