Wrung Out On The Washboard Of Your Soul (Burgeoisie Grandstand)

I Couldn’t be shaken before

I don’t deserve this collar

From under the ceiling to atop the roof

I don’t deserve this collar

I Can’t find the way any more

I don’t deserve this collar

Another face, another place gone

I don’t deserve this collar

I find myself adrift wading through these aisles

I’m getting too much fresh air

All my friends tell me what’s wrong

But of course, it always amounts to nothing

No brass tacks at the bottom of my cup

Dreams of buttons and papers plague me

My rest plays in shallow snow

A perfectly frostbitten and restless slumber

White fields and white walls

My resignation is my prison

A torment only stoked by my thoughts

I don’t deserve the ones who love me

I don’t deserve this collar

Once I could find solace on my knees

Where I thought I belonged

The pleasures of service were mine

And I held them dearly

My hands found their rightful purchase

My tongue found its faithful use

Panting and subdued I found my purpose

But my stability was founded on a dishonest loyalty

Our little house, whose walls were built with holes

Crumbling at a glance

Yet still I maintained to my obedience

“Look out for number one” they told me

And I remembered

I did

I don’t deserve this collar

My fingers gray perpetually

Wasting away from the life I live at my own expense

I am an empty vessel

Awake on the floor

Full only by my own doing

And only temporarily

And only detrimentally

It isn’t much of a hole

Or much of a slope

But rather a low place

A place whose gravity only pulls me deeper with the years

I wrap my hands around my own ankles

And I pull myself to new depths

I don’t deserve this collar