The Bills Bills Bills Bills BILLS!!!

[yoyossarian]

This lil' baby was originally published in my alt weekly column
Millions are Horrified!!!
by D X Stone 8/09/01

The Bills
loosely based on Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Bells”

When young,
We see something we like
We get it--put it on our credit
Let it sit and simmer for a bit
Then we get used to it and let it ride
And something happens deep inside
The cold finance computer’s dark septulchral heart...
As now enacts the dark accountant’s blackest arts...

We underestimate the going rate
The weight of interest is great
And vast and grand and grave
It’s hard to get it to behave...
For the interest is interested
In all the money you’ve invested
And all your other cash and savings--
The interest can’t help it’s cravings
It’s like a shark--it swims and eats
Makes little sharks that all compete
To devour every extra penny
And all your stocks and bonds, if any
Til’ you’re utterly in bondage to
The system that once promised you
That you would be rewarded for your discipline and skills...
But they didn’t say that it would be with
Bills, bills, bills, bills, bills!...
Oh, the owing and the growing of the bills.

And the pressure mounting, mounting
As the counters keep on counting
And each bill seems still more daunting
Til you find your wallet wanting
And the total figure’s taunting you!
And hunting you! and haunting you!
And causing you to run! and run!
Upon your little silver wheel
The starting gun is ever at your heel...
But none of these can put an ending
To your endless spree of spending
Spending, spending, unrelenting
You would never dream of renting!
You want it all, with all the frills...
But with it come the bills bills bills bills bills!
Oh, the paying and the praying on the bills!

And all the time and all the working
For some jerk who’s always jerking
You around, and dumping on you
Always scheming how to con you
Out of just a bit more sweat
You work your ass right off, and yet
Somehow you still go into debt...
And the check is in the mail
But you miss the deadline without fail
And they tack on an additional charge
So merciless a sum, so large
It triples your initial debt
And cripples you on credit, yet
You go right out and buy a nice
Home office desk and shelving set
So you can have a place to hone
Your weak bookkeeping skills...
On the bills bills bills bills bills bills!
Ah, the constant tabulating of the bills.

The disease is slow and creeping
Til’ you’re counting up your debt while sleeping!
And sweeping up the bills in piles high and heaping
Til they fill the files, jam the aisles completely!
And oh, the praying! And the paying!
And oh, the long long nights of laying
Eyes quite wide, as one quite dead
Unable to silence the math in your head
The violence of numbers colliding
And growing in number, and hungry, and rising
They double and triple, quadruple in size
As you watch your life savings taking a dive
You work and you slave
You pay as you may and yet still...
Come the bills bills bills bills bills bills bills!
The accounting of the ever-mounting bills.

And the ugly muddled juggling
And the scrimping, and the struggling
And the occasional drug-smuggling
For some local drug-ring uglies
And the third and fourth side-jobs
And the money borrowed from the mob
And the occasional murder for hire
And the pyramid scheme, and the insurance fire
And the knocking off of drugstores
And the ever-seeping weeping sores
From the constant prostitution
Yet there’s still no resolution
To the bills bills bills bills bills bills bills!...
Oh, the constant monstrous mounting of the bills!

And oh, the sums, and oh, the horror!
Growing ever on the morrow
Vainly still you seek to borrow
From the banks surcease of sorrow
And oh the begging! Oh, the mooching!
And all the rigorous ass-smooching
Robbing Pete to pay to Paul
Getting away and then dumping it all
On the vaguest of hunches
In a bunch of Vegas’ finest fancy money-mills...
You strive to survive as you’re buried alive
In the bills bills bills bills bills bills bills!
The terribly scary, unfair and unbearable bills!

Oh, the floundering and drowning
Ah, the sounding and the pounding
Of bills upon bills heaped in bilious waves
Like Pilate pounding on his slaves
Ah, the floundering and drowning
In the dark and cold and fast-compounding
Of the bills! The bills! The bills! bills! bills!...
The invisible and invidious
The sinister and insidious
The hateful and the hideous bills.

[Swamp Rat]

1. k&r

Excellent! :hi:

[yoyossarian]

4. Hey you!

;-)

[annabanana]

2. Pretty nifty ditty!

(It healps if you are familiar with the original)

[yoyossarian]

6. Thanx! I agree; parody hinges on familiarity w/the original source...

Oh, and btw, I'm also available for children's parties!

[yoyossarian]

9. Hey, anna, are you from Portland, OR?

I useta live there back in 2000; I hung out at Anna Banana's
a LOT!... and Coffee Time!... those were da days...
That town rocks; prob'ly the coolest, most beautiful and
interesting and intelligent lil' city I've ever lived in!

:( :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :)

Still cold in the winters, though... brrr!

:-(

[Warpy]

3. I'm impressed

and I'm a godawful snob who is almost impossible to impress.

Enthusiastic K&R and you don't even need to apologize to Poe.

I think he'd be flattered by this particular effort.

[yoyossarian]

5. I Yam Blushin' Here...

Thank ya kindly!

:hi:

[baldguy]

7. The Bills suck

[yoyossarian]

8. ha!

n/t

[dogknob]

10. yo, baby, yo!

:toast: