Oh, what we once thought we had, we didn't   And what we have now will, will never be that way again   So we call upon the author to explain      Our myxomatoid kids spraddle the streets   We?ve shunned them from the greasy grind   The poor little things they look so sad and old   As they mount us from behind   I ask them to desist and to refrain   And then we call upon the author to explain      Well, a rosary clutched in his hand   He died with tubes up his nose   And a cabal of angels with, with finger cymbals   Chanted his name in code   We shook our fists at the punishing rain   And we called upon the author to explain      He said, everything is messed up 'round here   Everything is banal and jejune   There?s a planetary conspiracy against the likes of you and me   In this idiot constituency of the moon   Well, he knew exactly who to blame   And we call upon the author to explain      Well, prolix, prolix   Nothing a pair of scissors can?t fix      Well I, I go guruing down the street   And young people gather 'round my feet   And they ask me things but I don?t know where to start   They ignite the powder trail straight to my father?s heart   And yeah, once again I call upon the author to explain   Yeah, we call upon the author to explain      Well, who is this great burdensome slavering dog thing   That mediocres my every thought?   I feel like a vacuum cleaner, a complete sucker   It?s fucked up and he is a fucker   But what an enormous and encyclopedic brain   I call upon the author to explain   Yeah, we call upon the author to explain, alright, yeah      Well, rampant discrimination   Mass poverty, third world debt   Infectious disease, global inequality   And deepening socio-economic divisions   Well, it does in your brain   We call upon the author to explain      Oh, now hang on, my friend Doug is tapping on the window   ?Hey, Doug, how you been??   Well, he brings me a book on holocaust poetry   Complete with pictures and then he tells me to get ready for the rain   And we call upon the author to explain      Well, you know I say prolix, prolix   Some a pair of scissors can?t fix      Bukowski was a jerk, Berryman was the best   He wrote like wet paper maché but he went the Hemingway   Weirdly on wings and with maximum pain   We call upon the author to explain   Yeah well, I call upon the author to explain      Yeah well, down in my bolt hole I see they've published   Another volume of unreconstructed rubbish   Well, the waves, the waves were soldiers moving   Well, thank you, ya thank you, thank you   And again I call upon the author to explain   Yeah, I call upon the author to explain   I call upon the author to explain   Yeah, we call upon the author to explain      I said, prolix, prolix   There's nothing a pair of scissors can?t fix