MESSY, ISN'T IT?

1) Stay-At-Home Mom

Why didn't you kill yourself today?
What cross, what coupon, what cathode ray
Put the joie de vivre in your diseased heart?
How Anne Hathaway,
How Peg Bundy
Thou art.
Hey Sugar:
Prove to me that the air you breathe
Wasn't better served by the leaves of a tree.
You're but a breeder,
Tax break receiver
With menopause sweats
A TV tray and a mosh pit son
Who wastes the marrow of his bones
Jumping into these drums.
Please tell him:
Don't stand so (no)
Don't stand so (close)
Don't stand so close to me.
See, I know your children
Because I've been your children
And us children, hopeful children
Ain't worth the stretch marks baby.
'Cause we may sing these songs of protest,
Cast our ballots, too
Forgo meat and
Ride our bikes and
Get our band's stupid tattoo
But it means nothing,
Nothing,
When we get eaten by the sun.
Que sera
Que sera
For, whatever there is will soon be all gone.
So what's wrong
With a song
That asks wherefore and why have you lived this long?
A purpose?
You want a reason?
Stop believing.
Or stop needing the answers.
There are no answers
Except the sun, the sun, the sun.
While you sit on your couch
And wait up for your boy
We're polluting his mind with this
(noise).

2) I'll Clap When I'm Impressed

If it ain't broke, then break it.
Destroy it.
Smash a hammer through your stucco,
Dismantle,
Sledgehammer it.
A la Sacco,
A la Vanzetti,
A la me gone berserk
With my head in the clouds
Nursing acid rain bowels,
Me stuck in traffic after work.
Where each car seems just like a coffin,
Just like a hearse.
We just can't go on like this:
Clinging to paychecks just like they were your mother's tits.
(Buck by buck)
Straighten your A's.
(Cent by cent)
Straighten your laces.
(Bill by bill)
Straighten your shirt.
We're better.
We're better off.
We're better off dead
Than burning out.
Buck by buck.
Cent by cent.
Bill by bill.
Until your dead.
Pay for your water,
Pay for your gas,
You pay for everything,
Even your death.
Choking on the barrel of a gun
(Choking on the barrel of a gun)
Sounds like much more fun.
Lock, stock and choking on the barrel of a gun.
Take the motherfucking money,
I'll spill the blood.

3) A Pyramid of Empties

Last call, last round.
Roofie's on the house.
Make sure that you've got your hair pulled back
Or your dad just might have
To pull your freshly drowned and maimed chunks of liver Out from your bangs.
Out from your bangs and he won't understand
Why the check he wrote to pay for your books
Went straight up your button nose instead.
Jeremy spoke in class today and this is what he said:
I raped Alice in chains with my nine inch nail
And now her reading rainbow's dead.
Schools for facts and figures.
Schools to multiply the odds of our demise.
No child gets left behind.
SATs to nonox-9.
From juicebox days to Columbine.
A pyramid of emtpies,
We're prime candidates for cyanide.
It's my fault for fucking up the kids.
It's my fault for buying in.
It's all my fault.
From the cradle to the grave:
Like a production line for gorgeous brains.
To be wild, oh, to break free.
To forsake all that they're teaching me to be.
It's all my fault.
(It's all your fault.)
I'm all to blame.

4) Saved By The Buoyancy of Citrus

I'm in the red
I've got the blues
I'm token black,
An early greying fool.
I need an orange
I need a lime
I need a last name that don't feel like such a crime.
I feel 16
I feel 60
I feel 9 to 5.
So sick of rent checks
So sick of life vests
So sick of 5 foot 9.
Once was lost but now am drowned.

5) Check, Please

"You clean up nice,"
she says to me with this
smug ass grin that means
she knows just how much
porn that it takes to get me off nowadays.
As the chance of a kiss disappears from her brain,
we bite and chew this night away.
"I like your new haircut,"
I say but what I mean is,
"Eat shit."
This ain't what they mean by love
and I don't seem the type that likes himself enough
to be loved.
Mademoiselle, sil vous plait, please excuse all the flesh I once ate.
But, avec moi, c'est la vie, my humble new diet ain't changing a thing.
What's compassion? What's a rouse? Cause I still ain't stuck in a bed with you.
I'd rather dine alone.
If meat is murder, what is love?
"Let's do this again sometime."
"Your place or mine?"
If meat is murder, what the fuck is love?

6) Opposable

Base.
How low can we go?
Fuck the Beatles, I'm an animal
An upright ape with opposable thumbs
To hold the clubs
To hold the guns
Swing low sweet chariot
God bless my DNA
Drunk drive my Chevy to the levee
Let the flood come and sweep me away
No this ain't the apocalypse
It's the way shit has always been
From Sodom to Saddam
Attila to Tienenmen
A quarter million years of human being
A quarter million years as a human stain
We use ten percent of our gorgeous brains
And leave the rest up to cocaine
Lucy in the sky
Got her hands on a new shotgun
Lucy in the sky
Got her hands on a Remington
Lucy in the sky
Her shiny diamonds drenched in blood
And I know where the wild things are
Don't look far
Don't look far
'Cause I got wisdom in my teeth
And terror in my wars
Yes, I know where the wild things are
Don't look far.
Don't look far.
There's a reason that it's hard to look in the mirror.
There's a reason that it's hard to go to the zoo
And there's a reason you want to pry open the cage
See, you should be there, too.

7) Cure For Cancer

It's all downhill
from here, old man.
Auf wiedersehen.
Two steps forward,
six feet underground.
Standing O,
Take a bow.
Lab coats,
machines
and all the chemotherapy
don't seem
to me
an answer to these tears you long to see.
So i ain't crying no more.
I'd pull out the plug
if i could muster up the love.
No one wants memories of
skid marks
pants pissed.
Jim Beam,
Mary Jane.
Wherefore art thou Kevorkian?
No way,
Jose,
it's not for me
this life spent basking in you agony.
Give me the longest walks.
Prescribe for me the shortest piers.
I ain't going out like that.
No way, not me, I'd rather die
And as I stood there by his bed,
bowls of Jell-O, crusts of bread,
stared straight into his eyes
and I wanted him to die.
And I felt the shame
Of such, such naiveté
that someone young,
that someone dumb,
someone my age
could feel so callously
to want to piss in the fountains of youth,
to dance all night on the graves of the dead,
to want to tear those pink ribbons to shreds.
And as he lay there in his bed,
80 pounds, half dead,
He said, "Bink, please hold my hand...
I don' think that you understand...
Oh, puneta, I've done all that I can
and I don't want to die."
You're gonna die
You're gonna die.
You're gonna.

8 ) Cure For AIDS

You are going to die
Your parents, your children
They're all going to die
Slow, painful
With a methadone drip
Ain't no Trojan I know
Don't change nothing at all
Not some latex
Not some cocktail of pills
No T-cells
No Magic
No hospital bills
A cure ain't a cure if a cure don't change nothing at all.
You're still going to die.
Cause death is still waiting
Death ain't got nothing but time
No bloodwork
No serum
Will keep you alive
So stop waiting
Stop wasting your time
Fuck bareback
Fuck till you choke on your
Life ain't worth living if all that you want is a
Cure ain't a cure if a cure don't change nothing at
All of my life double knotted by fear
And sometimes this fear is what keeps me here
I want to live a life drenched in the rain
No umbrella
No condom
And not vaccine
I want to live a life drenched in the rain
I'd rather die young than die young at heart.

9) Straight As She Wants To Be

A kiss is a kiss is a kiss.
Regardless of Joseph Smith.
And what I wouldn't give to love a woman like she does...
A kiss is a kiss is a kiss is a kiss.
On the lips.
Or on the lips.

10) Under The Affluence

Couch surfing will break your back
and there's not one night
in ten lonely years
that she's gone to sleep
in her bed upstairs.
It's piled high with clothes
that no longer fit.
Old christmas gifts
with tags still affixed.
She sleeps on the couch
and she dreams like a slave.
Dreams of her mortgage
it's jaws clamped round her vertebrae.
She's hollow,
she'd dyeing,
she's menopause-ing away.
Hey there, good looking
what's that microwave got cooking
for you and me tonight?
'Cause it seems like
you just might
stick your salt and pepper head inside.
That you might scream,
that you might
die just like Sylvia,
die as a slave,
die a single mother,
a bleak divorcee.
Dig under her affluence and this is what you'll find:
five beds, four baths, three kids, do the math.
Just debt, regret, empty nest, a broken back.
I was not worth throwing away all of your dreams.

11) Teenage Porno Hunter

A small ziploc bag is all that it takes
for a father to seem less a man than mistake.
'Cause that's not the type of thing that you want to find
under bed
when your horny
and fifteen
with smut and pornography mind.
You want blow jobs not blow,
rather cum than cry.

12) Goliath

And if I raise my hand
It's cause I don't understand
Why all the grown-ups that I know
Believe in boy kings and this giant man
I'd gladly bow my head
Just show me the bones
I'm sorry Mrs. Steves
I just can't stand it down here on my knees
I like magic
Magicians
The parting of the sea
But your god ain't wrought nothing but blasphemy
Swear I'd gladly bow my head
Just show me dem bones
I like stained glass
I like grape juice
But I like questions
And I like proof
Bones
Oh, where are the bones?
Someone show me his bones
Please!
I've seen pharaohs
I've seen dodos
I've seen dinosaur bones
Full of marrow
Bones to fill the grave
Oh, someone show me his bones
So I can show someone my faith
Slings and stones
May break my bones
But these fables
These tales
This book won't save my soul
Hell she hath no fury like an East Orange man's firstborn
Goddamn me
Reprimand me
My detention set me free!

13) (Messy, Isn't It?)

(instrumental)

14) Bottom Of The 9th Ward

It's raining, it's pouring,
this story's getting oh so boring.
And what else did you expect?
When it rains, someone always gets wet.
So it's searchlights
or the shadows.
With a newscast like that, Dan, I'd rather the gallow.
'Cause i ain't seen a life vest in days
that ain't strapped round the eyewitness men
making dayjobs out of your dismay.
When the saints go marching into the streets
it's too bad they won't know how to swim.
It's pouring.
it's raining,
but from this couch it seems much more like entertaining.
Oh, what the fuck's wrong with me?
All these bodies float 'round my head, your town
and i still sleep so damned flawlessly.
When the saints go marching into the streets
I'll be the one fast asleep.
Too selfish to weep.
If I could, yes I would, but it seems I can't.
I’m sorry.
When the revolution comes to this land
(Oh lord, I want to be in that number)
When we rich go out and stack those sandbags
(I want to be in that number)
When we all have enough water to drink
(Please, please let me be in that number)
When our leaders learn to cry at our feet
(I want to be in that number)
When the saints go marching in.

15) Tarantula Type

This sickness that's inside of me
Ain't a sickness that's easy to see
No rash, no runs, no potpourri
Of symptoms
Of woes
No bloody stool
No bloody nose
Just cause you can't see it's there
Don't mean that that shit isn't there
Stitched into this birthday suit
Oh grandmother, how I miss you
Like a banshee
Sid and Nancy
My double helix is coming unglued
It's in your blood
It clogs your veins
Eats your gorgeous brains
And it will drag you straight to your grave
Quick
A head in the clouds
Is a foot in the grave
A head in the clouds
Is a foot in the grave
But a foot in the grave is where I'd rather be
If a head in the clouds means I'm sick
I'm not sick
You're the one that's sick
Rick, serve me my goddamn breakfast.

16) What Goes Up

I was there
I sucked the bodies up my nose
Asbestos
And femurs
And nylon pantyhose
I should have cried
I tried to cry
I should have cry
I could not cry
Not saying it's good
Not saying it's right
But I guess my body don't trade tears
For the pinstripe kind of life
What goes up
Liars
Liars
Set my skinny jeans (suit and tie) on fire
Ashes, ashes
We all fall downtown
What goes up...

17) No Vonneguts, No Glory

Cowboys or indians?
Pinkerton to Taliban,
Tijuana to Nicaragua:
It smells like fear.
Vietnam to Afghanistan:
It tastes like tears.
They're crying, crying, they're crying their eyes.
They're dying, dying, they're dying to stay alive.
I have a dream,
I'm down on my knees,
choking,
gagging.
I hear a voice
stuck on repeat
it says,
"Place your right hand over your heart,
ready, begin,”
But I won't.
I won't pledge.
I won't pledge allegiance 'til
You pledge to never kill another human being
N.R.A. to Enola Gay:
The end is near.
Yes, I object,
just like Vonnegut,
I'll have none of it:
long live Ice-9.

18) (Love Poem)

(original poem by Richard Brautigan)

19) The El Segundo Blue Butterfly Habitat Preserve

I've seen the jet planes crash
and oil tankers galore.
I've seen Mexicans in boxer shorts
with Pacific Ocean pompadours.
I've seen gay penguins fuck
and bison roam through golden gates.
Seen dogs die on my welcome mat.
Seen my best friend's girlfriend masturbate.
I've seen half-empty beds
(what good are dreams?)
I've seen friends stuck with mortgages
(what good are dreams?)
(thanks for nothing)
I've seen men make more out of dreams
(what good are dreams?)
(good for nothing)
Than dreams'll ever make of them.
And clearly, wearily
life is but a scheme
where you say there's
blue butterflies
where blue butterflies have never been.
Some with Uncle Sam
Me?
My uncle rick:
All I see is scattergoods
and all I smell is shit.
What good are dreams?
What good are dreams if they come true?
He says, what good are your dreams if all your dreams come true?