Plough The Shit

The world is an overflowing gutter

It bubbles with the brine of shit and blood

And those who keep their eyes upon the heavens

Are the ones who'll wind up faces down in the muck

It’s easy to speak of grand ambitions

It’s easy to pretend you're innocent

But lest you get distracted by the suffering of your sister

Being practical and trying to pay the rent

Heaven has been promised to the righteous

Hell’s an overpopulated pit

Purgatory’s given to the dreamers

But the world belongs to those who plough the shit

There’s a special place in hell for fancy talkers

There’s a special place in heaven for the whores

There’s a throne reserved for those with good ideas

Stolen by the demagogues who wanted more

The flowers and the laces in the market

Are all purchased by the peddlers of the flesh

But those who bring relief and carnal pleasure

Sometimes serve the needs of mankind for the best

Cast off the limitations of the righteous

There are good deeds only devils can commit

Let us dance between the teardrops of the angels

For the world belongs to those who plough the shit

At last the supreme maker decreed that this creature

To whom he could give nothing holy his own

Should have a share

In the particular endowment of every other creature

Taking man therefore this

Creature of indeterminate image

He set him in the middle of the world

And thus spoke to him

We have given you all, Adam

No visage proper to yourself

No endowment properly your own

In order that

Whatever price, whatever form, whatever gifts you may with

Premeditation select

These same may you have and possess

Through your own judgement and decision

We have made you a creature neither of heaven

Nor of Earth

Neither mortal

Nor immortal

In order that you may

As the free and proud shaper of your own being

Fashion yourself in the form you may propose

It will be in your power

To descend to the lower brutish forms of life

You will be able through your own judgement and decision

To rise again to the superior orders

Whose life is divine

The dead become the emperors of memory

The saints have all been eaten by the worms

The living will write a twisted future

And the sinners all have practical concerns

The sentinels with rifles on the border

Of the pretenses of charity are swept

Oh but let's not talk of slipping into nightmares

For the days are run by those who haven't slept

So throw away the vestments of the righteous

Make sure the body almost lovely fits

The souls have taken flight now from the birdhouse

And the world belongs to those who plough the shit