[Verse]
I am a monster
Like Quasimodo
Or Caliban the natural man
Giving wild ripostes to my reflection
One ugly morning
In a rage
Father threw an apple
Into my carapace
And like the Invisible Man
Directing traffic
I'd be ineffective
No matter how enthusiastic
Amid the masses' frenzied
Participation
In this massive
Separation
Appearance is everything
Nothing is how it seems
In civilized society
It's called civility
I'm the Phantom of the Opera
Singing Beauty and the Beast
Or Henry Darger's
Autobiography
And that is the curt clues to my essence
Planned obsolescence
Appearance is everything
Nothing is how it seems
In a market economy
It's called marketing
And not exactly clawing my way to glory
Nor whimpering in the wind
But once positively
I'm teetering on the brink
Of an all-out breakthrough
But sometimes clear-headed
Sometimes a doofus
Sometimes very cordial
And sometimes aloof
I am syrupy optimistic one moment
Then gravely pessimistic the next
Irritable as a hornet sometimes
Then agreeable as it gets
And I'm not a pagan
I don't worship anything
Not gods that don't exist
Nor the sun which is oblivious
And I love my ancestors but not ritually
I don't blame them or praise them
For anything that they passed along to me
And I don't need stone altars to help me hedge my bet
Against the looming blackness
It is what it is
It is what it is
It is what it is