By Garry Abbott

 

Pay-per-view violence, pay-per-view news,

pay-pay-view silence and pay-per-view views.

Who needs their own opinions when the market’s on the cheap?

Why spend your own time thinking when you’ve such a busy week?

Someone said that God is dead, they announced it just this evening,

now they don’t know what to think because they’ve always had that feeling

in the pit of their stomach where reason drowns our intuition,

and it’s clawing up the walls and it’s reaching for the ceiling.

Now it’s gasping for air in this dark and rancid lair,

it’s drowning in the acrid stench and it can’t reach the stairs.

Exiled and exhausted it starts to slip below.

Prey mercy it’s exalted as the flesh falls from its bones.

The thought was not at fault here, the thought had no agenda,

we buried it in adverts and it choked in our surrender.

It couldn’t get a purchase, but a purchase dug its grave.

It was packaged and diluted, and then sent so far away.

But just think of all the money, time and effort we have saved

by letting little notions get washed out by the waves.

When the oceans stretch so far that they seem to disappear,

What I can’t see can’t hurt me.

What I don’t know I don’t fear.

So pay for your silence and pay for your news.

Pay for peace of mind and pay for someone else’s views.

Pay for the violence and pay for the truth.

Pay to grow old gracefully or pay to keep your youth.

Pay for the payments, just a little service charge,

will pay for the raiment’s of someone else’s garbs.

Pay for the right just to pay, right?

Pay for the right to have your say, right?

Or don’t pay at all, and fall down through the cracks.

Think for yourself, but there’s no coming back.

From the moment we are born

we’re reborn as sheets of paper.

They don’t seek your enlightenment,

It’s the payments they are after.