New Jersey suburbs, I turn three or four years old
Playing in the backyard by the kiddie pool with my cousin Nick
I walk through that screen door; my whole family is gathered round the table
They try to figure out what fills my tiny hands but they’re not able
So my mother says “Oh look what did little Michael bring?”
And my father says “Oh look you brought us a rock?”
But when they realized what it really was, there were screams and fits
They had discovered I’d presented them with my own shit

Now Sigmund Freud said this behavior really is quite common
Children idolize their waste as gift—tiny, sacred, solemn
Then infantile love for feces, it grows into love for wealth
As if Freud could trace how we grow up, well he can go to hell
I know New Jersey ain’t no place for making grandiose claims
No damn psychologist can tell me what’s gone wrong inside my brain

So I say fuck you Freud
You don’t know a thing about me
Fuck you Freud
You don’t know a thing at all

My best friend Claire, well she’s finished up a few years of nursing school
Before she did, they had her working part time at a prison
She read heartbeats of broken men who’d long ago lost hope
Trapped by four walls and their own frail condition truly exposed
She said there was one man who’d begged her just to please set him free
She told him “I just do my job that kind of shit’s not up to me”
When she came back hours later, there he was—swallowing his own shit
As if to say “look at this cursed place, it’s turned me into this!”

Now some say Marquis DeSade was as brilliant as he was mad
Imprisoned half his life, yet his ideas weren’t half bad
He wrote that eating one’s own excrement was the truest liberation
Surreal empowerment through embracing the most extreme depravation
Sure it seems crazy and disgusting but thoughtless it is not
Though I bet that man in prison never read that much DeSade

He’d say fuck you French guy
You don’t know a thing about me
He’d say fuck you French guy
You don’t know a thing at all

I guess the moral to this story is you can’t hope to explain
Just what it means to be human or grow up or be sane
I don’t know much, I just scratch out all my hopeless bitter tunes
My sense of humor is my last defense before I lick my wounds
Communication is a bitch, I have my problems making peace
When all the messages we send are completely misconceived
Like there’s a guy who tries to tell me I write the funniest of songs
Far from me to be the one to explain why that just seems wrong

But at the core of all my stories, there is always something dark
Smoke and mirrors for the murky corners of my swollen heart
So I steal pennies from the dirty fountains of my checkered youth
Hoping someday all these words I write will mean something to you
No matter what I do people will still liken me to comics
But what is funny and absurd to you is just me being honest

So I say fuck you everyone
You don’t know a thing about me
I say fuck you everyone
You don’t know a thing at all

And I don’t need no pyrotechnics
Or no three part harmonies
To tell you how I wasted younger days
Overthinking loneliness
And trying to get laid