Bobryanmusic.com: The Tracks

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This was one of the last songs written for this collection. I was frustrated with the reality that, as a Bosnian friend told me, if Nato left Bosnia, there would again be war within 2 weeks.

After all that was lost.

Yugoslavia was the Eastern European communist nation that threw off Stalin and the Soviets, refusing to align with either the East or West. Never under the Warsaw Pact, its citizens were free to travel, free to live pretty much as they wanted, within the confines of the system... and I do believe that if Yugoslavia could have maintained itself through the post-Tito years... if it had not allowed itself to regress into Civil War and ethnic bickering, it might have been the most prosperous and successful of its Eastern European neighbors right now. They had everything going for them, and still not only chose to rip it all apart, but even now -- having lost so much -- so many would do it all again.

A song of real frustration. Maybe close to preachy. I think Billy Williams' lovely guitar work saves it from being a tedious rant. Thank God.

No One Wins

The roof is gone; the windows too
There are piles of brick and plaster where the shells came through.
And the walls are blackened; burned by fire.
This whole place has been consumed by mean desire.
You said you didn’t want to live with them,
And, in the end, we both know no one wins.

The streets are shattered and the power fails
And the trains don’t run because someone pulled apart the rails.
And the telephones will not connect.
Fields lie fallow, and the factories stand wrecked.
But you said you didn’t want to live with them,
And, in the end, we both know no one wins.

Now you have no money, and your dreams bleed fear.
And your children want to run, they see no future here.
Unfamiliar faces walk your streets at night.
Strangers sleep in your home and they keep it locked up tight.
But you said you didn’t’ want to live with them
And, in the end, we both know no one wins..


© 2003, 2004 by Bob Ryan
Published by Leaping Armadillo, Music (ASCAP)
Written October 6, 2003, Phoenix, AZ