Childhood of a Leader

Snake handler, faith healer

lawyer, doctor, sword swallower

child psychologist, amateur pornographer

Sales associate

Six percent commission

Do you have our club membership?

Can I tell you about the benefits?

Photo developing, we see every picture

And rob extras of those of the sexual nature

There's a shoebox in the back which is storing the duplications

Right adjacent to a pile of blank applications

And if our patrons weren't so ordinary, I might take up blackmail

I'd seize upon the evil if I thought it would be the key to feeling once again

But what I can gather from these bins is that

People's lives don't provide many pictures worth stealing

Just like mine, although plenty get abandoned

I've stopped seeking sex to find different kinds of passion

Because sometimes amongst the thumbs and out of focus baby shots

A candid picture of anger or happiness shows up

I know I've been swallowed

I can feel the acid eating at my skin

I don't want to live in the stomach

But I don't want to be shit

Out into the streets with parts of me partially digested

Left here in the beast

I know I've been swallowed

I can feel the acid eating at my eyes, at my hands, at my friends, at my mind

And if I don't die

I'm developing quite an appetite

I guess I'll have to eat my way back outside

I've got it down to where it takes me about an hour

To bag the trash and get it out from underneath the counter

Lug it up to the dumpster, back behind the shopping center

Lost in thought, God it's hot, a ghost inside the register

Zombie walking parking lots

waiting for my moms to pick me up

holding down the vomit in my throat

I hope no one I know ever sees me in this state

Weeks deep in the belly of the beast named retail

I want to yell "help me!"

The scream of something's very wrong

But everyone will tell me that my battle cry is too banal

And way dated

No, I can't explain it

But I didn't say that they could take

What they're exchanging for my paycheck

I will not be addicted

To cigarettes and scratch-off lotto tickets

I'm not satisfied to lie about my clock-out times

When I close the store

I need something more from this life

In the pictures I horde, I find one in every five hundred

That makes me feel a little less disgusting

The answer must be here, I just haven't found it yet

That's why I keep stealing, so I can not forget

That I was once whole, I was once real

It's just a job, so it's not a big deal, right?

So why am I so acutely aware that I'm being digested?

Why am I scared at night that I might not survive in this climate?

My body's a box, and I'm sealed inside it

Why have we decided that we're stuck behind the stomach lining?

I'll find a way out, or die trying

I'll find a way out, or die trying

I'll find a way out, or die trying

I'll find a way out, I'll find a way, I'll find a way out or die trying