Bender - The Rat lyrics

With one punch, at the age of 16 and a half
I knocked out my father
A cruel shiny bastard with bad breath
And I didn't go home for some time
Only now and then to try to
Get a dollar from dear momma
It was 1937 in Los Angeles and
It was a hell of a vienna
I ran with these older guys
But for them it was the same
Mostly breathing hard air
And robbing gas stations that
Didn't have any money
And a few lucky among us worked part-time
As Western Union messenger boys
We slept in rented rooms that weren't rented
And we drank ale and wine
With the shades down being quiet quiet
And then awakening the whole
Building with a fistfight
Breaking mirrors and chairs and lamps
Then running down the stairway just
Before the police arrived
Some of us soldiers of the future
Running through those empty starving streets
And alleys of Los Angeles and all of us
Getting together later in Pete's room
A small cube of space under a stairway
There we were, packed in there
Without women, without cigarettes
Without anything to drink
While the rich pawed away
At their many choices
And the young girls let them
The same girls who spit at our shadows as we
Walked past it was a hell of a Vienna
Three of us under that stairway were
Killed in World War I I
Another one is now manager of a mattress
Company me? I'm 30 years older
The town is four or five times as big
But just as rotten
And the girls still spit on my shadow
Another war is building for another reason
I can hardly get a job now for
The same reason I couldn't then
I don't know anything, I can't do anything
Sex? Well just the old ones knock
On my door after midnight
I can't sleep and they see
The lights and are curious
The old ones, their husbands
No longer want them, Their children are gone
If they show me, enough good
Leg, the legs go last, I go to bed with
Them so the old women bring me love
And I smoke their cigarettes
As they talk talk talk
And then we go to bed again
And I bring them love
And they feel good and talk
Until the sun comes up, Then we
Sleep it's a hell of a Paris
Once upon a time
A guy called Dylan Thomas was destroyed by
Poetry audiences sit your asses down
I'm gonna destroy you
Instead of you destroying me