The first day of school  the hallways the darkest
 Like a gauntlet
 the voices haunted
 Walking in with his thin skin  lowered chin
 He knew the names that they would taunt him with
 Faggot  sissy  punk  queen  queer
 Although he'd never had sex in his 15 years
 And when they harassed him it was for a reason
 And when they provoked him it became open season
 for the fox and the hunter, the sparks and the thunder
 that pushed the boy under, then pillage and plunder
 It kind of makes you wonder
 how one can hurt another
 But dehumanizing the victim makes things simpler
 It's like breathing with a respirator
 It eases the conscience of even the most conscious
 and calculating violator
 Words can reduce a person to an object,
 something more easy to hate
 An inanimate entity, completely disposable,
 no problem to obliterate
 [CHORUS:]
 But death is the silence
 in this language of violence
 Death is the silence
 But death is the silence
 in this cycle of violence
 death is the silence
 It's tough to be young, the young long to be tougher
 When we pick on someone else it might make us feel rougher
 Abused by their fathers but was at home though
 so to prove to each other that they were not homos
 The exclamation of the phobic fury
 executioner, a judge and jury
 The mob mentality, individuality was nowhere
 Dignity forgotten at the bottom of a dumb old dare and a numb cold
 stare
 On the way home it was back to name calling
 Ten against one they had his back up against the wall and
 they reveled in their laughter as they surrounded him
 But it wasn't a game when they up jumped and grounded him
 They picked up their bats with their muscles straining
 and they decided they were gonna beat this fella's brain in
 with an awful, powerful, showerful, an hour full of violence
 Inflict the strictest brutality and dominance
 They didn't hear him screaming, they didn't hear him pleading
 They ran like cowards and left the boy bleeding
 in a pool of red 'til all tears were shed
 and his eyes quietly slid into the back of his head
 dead...
 [CHORUS]
 [2x]
 You won't see the face 'til the eyelids drop
 You won't hear the screaming until it stops
 The boy's parents were gone and his grandmother had raised him
 She was mad she had no form of retaliation
 The pack didn't have to worry about being on a hitlist
 But the thing they never thought about was that there was a witness
 to this senseless crime, right place wrong time
 Tried as an adult one of them was gonna do hard time
 The first day of prison was always the hardest
 The first day of prison, the hallways the darkest
 Like a gauntlet
 the voices haunted
 Faggot, sissy, punk, queen, queer
 Words he used before had a new meaning in here
 As a group of men in front of him came near
 for the first time in his life the young bully felt fear
 He'd never been on this side of the name calling
 Five against one they had his back up against the wall and
 he had never questioned his own sexuality
 but this group of men didn't hesitate in their reality
 with an awful, powerful, showerful, an hour full of violence
 Inflict the strictest brutality and dominance
 They didn't hear him screaming
 They didn't hear him pleading
 They took what they wanted and then left him bleeding in the corner
 The giant reduced to jack horner
 But dehumanizing the victim makes things simpler
 It's like breathing with a respirator
 It eases the conscience of even the most conscious
 and calculating violator
 The power of words, don't take it for granted
 when you hear a man ranting
 Don't just read the lips, be more sublime than this
 Put everything in context, is this a tale of rough justice
 in a land where there's no justice at all ?
 Who is really the victim ? Or are we all the cause, and victim of it
 all ?
 [CHORUS]
 [2x]
 You won't see the face 'til the eyelids drop
 You won't hear the screaming until it stops