The 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