Serpico at the Salad Bar

Singing is inherently embarrassing
But I’ll do anything for a laugh
Everyone who was alive finally died my phone crooned
Had to happen sometime, that’s just math

Let’s OD at the same time
We’ll tremble like boys kissing
In the Reptile World in the Megachurch Zoo
I’ve been building children’s coffins in a factory outside of Austin the food’s alright except for the Wednesday Stew

This life is taking forever
Forever now
Forever

I see Serpico at the Salad Bar
He holds a walking stick, drives a sports car
Even cops who get shot in the head
Must disappear into the valley
And grow their beards like wizards
Before they come back from the dead

I close my eyes and I am Serpico
I am the police who polices police
Deep undercover staring at the unknown
One day I’ll just be an old voicemail
In an old phone, in an old shoebox
In that shit hole you used to call a home

This life is taking forever
Forever now
Forever

I see John Ashbery in a wheelchair
Just staring off in the dairy aisle
I go to the same spot and I stare at that milk
And I try to listen real hard, for a little while

The refrigerator hum sounds like George Washington
Chewing gum with a mouth full of slave teeth
The light dances across the butter
And suddenly the whole world is a dusty gym
And it’s prom and we’re all falling in love like juveniles

I was the prom prince, you were the princess
I was just a kid holding another kid
Swaying like an idiot as she cried
I summon Anne Sexton’s ghost in her dead mother’s fur coat
She says “kid, you either live or die”

This life is taking forever
Forever now
Forever