Do you remember when the door slid open, and the sunlight poured in? And there was time yet to cover your skin? Before this lazy race toward greater self-destruction Proxy-funeral pyres for all the fallen scooters, piled nineteen miles high Pedal taverns in the sky! Drunken sirens' swan song Holding court with golden hoses pumping fireball indulgences The God of Gore in all his glory tried to slow it down Rode his lion into town, till the Hartford circus folded And the acoustic zoo was closed, so Mercer's hill was shown To be built atop the bones of electric ponies made of plastic And a thing known in Richmond as Poor Man's Petroleum Your mood organ in the corner hums, just buzzing and patrolling them All your primal and primarily sanctimonious emotions Which leave you only bloated, floating hopeless in an ocean Of humdrum hypnosis Can't say it to no one plain, or they'll wash you down the drain Like Carrie Buck into her prison I'll never be who you want me to be I'll never be who you are I dream of Lillian Leitzel's screams, cryin' out from 'neath the beam Send word to poor Codona: there's been another Fall of Rome, and I paint my eyes wide shut, I see the big top which raised me But only when I sleep, like the monkey beetle on a daisy Pop a dose in Cappadocia, in a quarrel with Ezra Pound Whose fascist ghost comes crawlin' when I land in London Town Is anybody listening? This disconnect is crippling! On my boyhood bedroom wall there hung a poem by Rudyard Kipling If you give a mouse your cookies, it'll follow you around Big Brother's always watching, from his desk in Palo Alto So it all goes up in flames And the hidden Terms and Conditions state the dawn of an Age Ablaze How I wish my god were gilded, how I lean on dear old Twain! How I sing the body electric, in my pleasure and in my pain! What a twisted sort of shame, to play their sordid game In which even the great Bucephalus has egg on his long face I'll never be who you want me to be I'll never be who you are I awoke to a snow globe cracked like pink watermelon brains My cheeks slick with saline from a dream of darker days Visions of bodies bent on sidewalks, by the Arch of my youth Where I heard the shriek of angels and I saw the hellhounds loose 146 candles snuffed by treacherous winds The hands of greed which locked the doors and sealed the poor girls in Their temples violated violently, as they leapt unto the spikes In the throes of this sick spectacle I cried into the night: "O cruel Fortuna, take me instead of them!" "Split your earth and spit them out, so they can breathe again!" I swear I never feel so old as when I'm with my little sister's friends Then again, it must be strange to be born with Pop-Tarts for hands They hired me to be Pied Piper, but promptly fired me when I said the only song I could play was "Lady Franklin's Lament" The kids kicked me to the curb, threatened to cancel me and said "If you want a gig, man, don't come back till you can sing us Cardi B or Lil Xan" But I'll never be who you want me to be I'll never be who you are