Piss Factory Songtext

von Patti Smith

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.