Patti Smith - Piss Factory lyrics

rate me

Sixteen and time to pay off

I got this job in a piss factory inspecting pipe

Forty hours thirty-six dollars a week

But it's a paycheck, Jack.

It's so hot in here, hot like Sahara

You could faint in the heat

But these bitches are just too lame to understand

Too goddamned grateful to get this job

To know they're getting screwed up the ass

All these women they got no teeth or gum or cranium

And the way they suck hot sausage

But me well I wasn't sayin' too much neither

I was moral school girl hard-working asshole

I figured I was speedo motorcycle

I had to earn my dough, had to earn my dough

But no you gotta, you gotta [relate, babe,]

You gotta find the rhythm within

Floor boss slides up to me and he says

"Hey sister, you just movin' too fast,

You screwin' up the quota,

You doin' your piece work too fast,

Now you get off your mustang sally

You ain't goin' nowhere, you ain't goin' nowhere."

I lay back. I get my nerve up. I take a swig of Romilar

And walk up to hot shit Dot Hook and I say

"Hey, hey sister it don't matter whether I do labor fast or slow,

There's always more labor after."

She's real Catholic, see. She fingers her cross and she says

"There's one reason. There's one reason.

You do it my way or I push your face in.

We knee you in the john if you don't get off your get off your mustang Sally,

If you don't shake it up baby." Shake it up, baby. Twist & shout"

Oh that I could will a radio here. James Brown singing

"I Lost Someone" or the Jesters and the Paragons

And Georgie Woods the guy with the goods and Guided Missiles ...

But no, I got nothin', no diversion, no window,

Nothing here but a porthole in the plaster, in the plaster,

Where I look down, look at sweet Theresa's convent

All those nurses, all those nuns scattin' 'round

With their bloom hoods like cats in mourning.

Oh to me they, you know, to me they look pretty damn free down there

Down there not having crystal smooth

Not having to smooth those hands against hot steel

Not having to worry about the [inspeed] the dogma the [inspeed] of labor

They look pretty damn free down there,

And the way they smell, the way they smell

And here I gotta be up here smellin' Dot Hook's midwife sweat

I would rather smell the way boys smell--

Oh those schoolboys the way their legs flap under the desks in study hall

That odor rising roses and ammonia

And way their dicks droop like lilacs

Or the way they smell that forbidden acrid smell

But no I got, I got pink clammy lady in my nostril

Her against the wheel me against the wheel

Oh slow motion inspection is drivin' me insane

In steel next to Dot Hook -- oh we may look the same--

Shoulder to shoulder sweatin' 110 degrees

But I will never faint, I will never faint

They laugh and they expect me to faint but I will never faint

I refuse to lose, I refuse to fall down

Because you see it's the monotony that's got to me

Every afternoon like the last one

Every afternoon like a rerun next to Dot Hook

And yeah we look the same

Both pumpin' steel, both sweatin'

But you know she got nothin' to hide

And I got something to hide here called desire

I got something to hide here called desire

And I will get out of here--

You know the fiery potion is just about to come

In my nose is the taste of sugar

And I got nothin' to hide here save desire

And I'm gonna go, I'm gonna get out of here

I'm gonna get out of here, I'm gonna get on that train,

I'm gonna go on that train and go to New York City

I'm gonna be somebody, I'm gonna get on that train, go to New York City,

I'm gonna be so bad I'm gonna be a big star and I will never return,

Never return, no, never return, to burn out in this piss factory

And I will travel light.

Oh, watch me now.