House of the Butterflies

You want to be a billionaire expat sex criminal You want a private jet, private island A driver, a pilot, and a team of lawyers You want a Patek Philippe and Bill Clinton's number You want to hit up your CIA handler for an Adderall scrip You want a key bump and a ribeye the size of a briefcase You want to be insulated, isolated Floating miles above the city, serene, lotus position One with the universe You want to be vicious You want to be formidable But instead you get to find out what it's like To live inside the open, sucking chest wound of a collapsed, demented empire And the answer is It's pretty cool i guess As long as they keep those unemployment checks coming You wanna be a slave owner Relaxed and idle Surveying the landscape from your veranda Prone in your sumptuous daybed Lips on a cocktail Mind blank, blissful Barely listening as your aide-de-camp relates news from the front You don't want to be bothered with these implementation details Who cares if the planes crash? Who cares if the ships sink? Isn't that why we have insurance? You wanna be persecuted, hounded Boxed in, nothing to lose Let loose, snarling Justified, forever excused Never measured, not subject to the jurisdiction Of the bloodless scrutineers Exempt from the decrees And given special dispensation You want to be counted on, deputized, saluted Decorated, admired, memorialized and mourned You want to be sun-hot, burning to the touch You wanna be an eclipse, suffocating, too bright to look at Presenting yourself in your many armed form The god of death and war You want them to stop spitting in your milkshake When you go through the drive-through Well no dice, bitch! better luck next time! House of the Butterflies House of the Butterflies House of the Butterflies House of the Butterflies House of the Butterflies House of the Butterflies House of the Butterflies House of the Butterflies You want to build something, get your hands dirty, level the foundation Ride right up front in the bulldozer Bullet-proof glass between you and those teenagers, let em throw their stones! You want to hit paydirt, bedrock, solid marble But the hydraulic pump pounds out a rhythm Of liquefaction And the mountain turns to slurry and slides into the river valley Burying some wondrous, undiscovered ecosystem That will never be recorded in your memoirs You want to call a point of order, second the motion, ask for clarification of the bylaws You want to move to censure, the gentlemen is out of order You want the bailiff to restrain him You'll have him barred from the premises This is simply not how one behaves at Outback Steakhouse House of the Butterflies House of the Butterflies House of the Butterflies House of the Butterflies House of the Butterflies House of the Butterflies House of the Butterflies House of the Butterflies You wanna have some psychedelic thrill You want to commune with the ancients You want to find the map to the astral plane Well there's no such thing In the House of the Butterflies in the blink of a human eye You can hunt You can wound You can kill But you can never leave In the House of the Butterflies In the space of a spoken rhyme You can run You can scream You can cry But you won't be believed