Verse
I’m not from around here—so I hope you take this the right way but 
Even though you seem to be neurologically complex enough
You flesh-bearing bipeds make an incredibly contradiction-riddled 
Species, as if you’re all bent on comic self-destruction
Of course, you could be vastly superior in some inscrutable way 
So allow me to share some of my recent observations and 
Perhaps you might be able to help me understand your kind

Verse
I saw one of your kind walking with a quadruped progeny substitute 
The poor thing was tethered to a territorial freedom constraint
Still it managed to defecate on a chlorophyll-covered status exhibit 
When someone ran out of a privacy protection unit and yelled
“Get that mongrel out of my yard. Why don’t you
Dump its shit on your own damn lawn!” The other pretended
Like she didn’t hear and muttered underneath her breath, “Animal hater.”

Verse
I ventured into one of your culturally vacant expanses of sameness
And found myself in the middle of one of those mass consumption pits
They were running some sort of consumer feeding frenzy when I overheard
A verbal exchange between two discretionary income disposers
“John’s out of town,” one said, “I’ve been shopping now
For two whole days. This is really gonna cost him.”
The other just chuckled and replied as she winked her eye, “Serves him right.”

Verse
I headed out to the surrounding asphalt field neatly divided into
Grid-lined stalls packed side-to-side with air-polluting transportation
Pods as your sun was shining through your withering ultra-violet buffer
I passed some bipeds operating carcinogen intake units. One said
“I don’t know why people complain about smoking indoors
“I mean like I don’t complain about other people’s perfume.”
Just then a passer-by remarked, “Perfume doesn’t consume other people’s lungs.”

Verse
Then I looked up and noticed a huge artificially lit persuasion display
It kept flashing arrangements of symbols which when decoded
Promoted tricks like internet banking, certificates of deposit
And a way to easily obtain large quantities of paper wealth units
Claimed you could even pick your own interest rate and then it displayed 
Arbitrary measurements of thermal activity and temporal calibration
But before it began to repeat these messages all over again, it flashed, “John 3:15”

Verse
Well, did some digging and found your “John 3:15” resembles a
Concept long ago discarded in ridicule and shame back where
I come from. Seems we were killing so many of our own kind over
Our version of schizophrenia, we had to give it up in order to survive
So I visited a known purveyor of your brand of high-flying hocus pocus
And I described the great liberation we enjoyed when we gave it up
Although he seemed to understand, he just gave me a condescending look and said, “Go to hell.”

© Copyright 2000, 2015 Peter Lloyd

I'm Not from Around Here

Songwriter since 1966. Can't believe I still have to write protest songs. Prefer writing love songs and songs of praise for stand-up women and men, parodies, lyrical nonsense, blues and adaptations.