tin can song.

i don't want to be what i am
i've got oil for blood
and there's oil on my hands.
my knees will defeat my stance.
but if you'll be my crutch
you can keep all my land...

i don't want to be what i am.
i'd rather be a song machine
you can crank by hand.
i'll reach out to strike whatever i can,
but when you turn me around
i won't know where you're bound to land...

oh, but wouldn't i rather be
some ashen torn-down factory
you'd wrecked deliberately
with a cannonball and your own hands -
just to melt me down
sculpt me into some hol(e-)y tin can
that would only play the tune you wanted to hear,
and you'd never hear anything else from me, dear,
again?

when you first approached, your eyes glowed.
and i can't quite recall recognizing the hue
like silver-paved streets flooded with gutterwater
or polished steel reflecting a sky of blue.
the fire in them alone would leave me the scoriae
from making that music box machine, simple and true,
but i don't think that you've ever noticed
when your face turns my way they see straight through
me.

you were layin in the bed of a pickup truck late one night.
a friend of ours was drivin' and when we stopped at a light,
i nearly jumped out of my skin when you reached through my window
and squeezed my shoulder so quick and so tight.
and i thought on how the impression would never leave
my body
nor my mind.

in my youth, i resented my father
for asking me to be a pull-the-ring-on-a-string toy,
to say and do as he pleased when he wanted, and that's all.
now i wonder if i wouldn't be prettier as nothing more
than a porcelain doll.