Patti Smith — Piss Factory

Sixteen and time to pay off I get this job in a piss factory Inspecting pipes Forty hours Thirty-six dollars a week But it's a pay-check, Jack So hot in here, hot like Sahara You could faint from 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 saying too much neither I was more a 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 got to You got to relate, babe You got to find the rhythm within Floor boss slides up to me and he says "Hey sister You're just moving too fast You're screwing up the quota. You're doing your piece work too fast Now you get off your Mustang, Sally, You ain't going nowhere You ain't going nowhere." I laid 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 is one reason There is 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 Mustang, Sally If you don't shake it up baby Shake it up baby Twist and shout” Oh, would I could hear 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 nothing 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 Scatting round with their blue hoods Like cats in mourning. Or to me they You know, to me they look pretty damn free down there Down there Not having to press those smooth Not having to smooth those hands against hot steel Not having to worry about the in-speed The dogma of in-speed labor Or then, they’re pretty damn free down there The way they smell The way they smell And here I got to be up here Smelling Dot Hook's midwife sweat I would rather smell the way boys smell Oh, those schoolboys Way their legs flap under the desk in the study hall That odor rising Roses and ammonia And the way their dicks droop like lilacs Or the way they smell that forbidden acrid smell But no I got to I got to put clammy lady in my nostril Her against the wheel Me against the wheel Oh, the in-speed, slow motion inspection Is driving me insane In steel next to Dot Hook Oh, we may look the same Shoulder to shoulder Sweating 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 re-run Next to Dot Hook And yes, we look the same Both pumping steel Both sweating But you know she got nothing 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 that fear potion is just about to come In my nose is the taste of sugar And I got nothing to hide here Save desire And I'm going to go I'm going to get out of here I'm going to get out of here I'm going to get on that train And I'm going to go on that train And go to New York City I'm going to be somebody I'm getting Going to get on that train Go to New York City I'm going to be so big I'm going to be a big star And I will never return Never return No, never return to burn at this piss factory And I will travel light Oh, watch me now.