worries (2000?)

In a suburban city,
In the U.S of A
Young girl talks
On the phone all day
About material things
Abercrombie and shit
She worries about the dance
How she’ll pay for it
She wants to know
What should she wear?
How to do her hair,
Does he really care?
And how to walk in a pair
Of 4 inch heels
She wonders how he feels
While another girl
Worries about her meals

Out in Africa
She sits in her bed
Cloth on a dirt floor
House the size of my shed
And she’s crying
Cuz her family is dead
The police came
And shot em in the head
How will she get fed?
Now she has to wed
Just to get by
She saw her family die
Still wonder why she cries?

OK now here’s a change in pace just to help you get along
If you’re listening to this song
Ok now, you know we all worry about many different things
Its what this life brings
Pleasure but it stings
Its our freedom held in by steel bars
But lets look to the stars
Where we see an alien race
With worries on their face
A complicated case
Cuz there is no longer any trace
Of the base-ic solution
Of their energy and pollution
This once great institution
Has now fallen to a panic
The leaders insanely manic
They cant understand it
Why didn’t they start to manage
Now the planet is all damage
And their civ is done
Leaders on the run
People got the gun
Anarchy beneath the blue sun

This will soon be our situation
Planets got its limitations
But people got the motivation
To chop it up
and fill their cup
with polluted water
from dirty nations
the planets a living thing
its gonna die someday
we got to slow it down
not help it on its way

****I wrote this when i was a sophmore, reflecting on the differences between people in different places. i had gone to tanzania earlier that year.. I was starting to become involved in SOS (our environmental and social justice group at school)
it wasnt meant to place judgement on suburban girls just to note the differences, but i think my prejudice probably shows..*****