THE TRAP

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 left 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