Phil Ochs - The Confession (Demo Version) lyrics

There's nothing as cold as the freeze in your soul At the moment when you are arrested There's nothing as real as the iron and steel On the handcuffs when you protested You race through the night in the prison of fright As you head for the quicksand of questions And children unborn will see you in scorn If ever you make a confession And the click of a lock is a shiver of shock As you wonder what are their objectives Upon your guard for the voices are hard That belong to the cops and detectives And it's hard to believe as they roll up their sleeves That you're in for more than a session And it couldn't be true and it's not really you That they want to make a confession You cannot conceal the confussion you feel As they steadily work to out-guess you And some will pretend they are really your friend Who rally around to your rescue With frightening force your mind is divorced To give them the guilty impression Every word that you hear is a weapon of fear To win the war of confessions The lights shoot a glare like bullets they stare And burn out the base of conviction And you squint and you blink and you try not to think Of the cobwebs of contridictions And your clothes will be wet with the rivers of sweat That tells the tale of attention And once in awhile the clock has to smile As it counts the time of confession The questions will rain and pour on your brain With the proper speed they are driven The circles they pace and the sneer on their face Tells you no quarter is given You can salvage your mind when the paper is signed Then the crime is solved by oppression But win, lose, or draw, it's the rule of the law To always work for confession And the balance of scales seems distant and pale In the shadowy days of the trial And sometimes they die; with their name on a lie When it's all too late for denial When agreement is full the switch must be pulled And the chair leaves no hope for correction But the chances are large he was guilty as charged After all, he made a confession