A question

I want you to answer me

If you can’t be yourself can you really be called free?

 

Employment

That shackled compromise

To give up who we are so our bank accounts can rise

 

I WEAR THE PLASTIC SMILE AND I

PERFORM SO EASILY AND I

PRETEND NORMALITY AND I

CHOKE DOWN CONFORMITY AND I

FEIGN THIS IS SANITY AND I

INDULGE DEPRAVITY AND I

STUNT MY CAPACITY AND I

PLAY ALONG WITH YOUR WORLD

 

The system

To which our membership is birth

And from which we can’t escape until we’re buried under earth

Is to trade our greatest days for the promise of a wage

And trade possibility for the comfort of a cage

Where we can rage amongst the beige until we reach retirement age

Exploited at every stage like Karl Marx warned on every page

Of those books we never read because we had to get ahead

Working hard, overtime, I can relax when I’m dead

Except I can’t

Because I’d no longer exist

And the one life that I had was just an opportunity missed

All those things I never did, all the sights I didn’t see

All because I strove to be a dedicated employee

First to start and last to leave

Achieve each task you could conceive

Sacrifice and sweat and bleed to serve my boss’s every need

And for what?

Why did I make this sacrifice?

So I could pay all my bills on time but have no time for my life?

 

I WEAR THE PLASTIC SMILE AND I

PERFORM SO EASILY AND I

PRETEND NORMALITY AND I

CHOKE DOWN CONFORMITY AND I

FEIGN THIS IS SANITY AND I

INDULGE DEPRAVITY AND I

STUNT MY CAPACITY AND I

PLAY ALONG WITH YOUR WORLD

 

The trap

Which seems to sucker us in turn

Is the idea that a living is a thing you ought to earn

You don’t earn what is a right, it should be yours without a fight

And what we buy would still exist if all the costs were just dismissed

Because the price is far too high if we must work until we die

Yet to ask why, and not comply, is a sure path to suicide 

We took all their fictions and lived like they’re real

Economists laugh with duplicitous zeal

And inside our bones you know we all feel,

That we’re not paid enough for the hours that they steal

 

But that alarm

Rips us from sleep again each day

And too tired to complain we can’t see another way

But to climb on that treadmill and to our daily grind commute

Stuck in a rut, routine set, we cannot see another route

And out we sell our precious days, as entrenched, the system stays

But at least we’re getting paid, as we endure this masquerade

And as we die a little death and feel our will begin to fade

We know at least there are new toys on which to spend the cash we saved 

 

 

I WEAR THE PLASTIC SMILE AND I

PERFORM SO EASILY AND I

PRETEND NORMALITY AND I

CHOKE DOWN CONFORMITY AND I

FEIGN THIS IS SANITY AND I

INDULGE DEPRAVITY AND I

STUNT MY CAPACITY AND I

PLAY ALONG WITH YOUR WORLD