On Garbage Day

Copyright 2000 Stan Lyness

  4/4 upbeat jazz, male or female voice


dialup listen
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At dawn today I calmly lay asleep and sweetly dreaming,
when burst a cursed screaming between my dreams and me -
a garbage truck was hauling up a garbage-laden steel bin;
it mashed its trash and squealed in hydraulic harmony.
  The stillness of a sleepy town
  was broken with unspoken sound
  of empty trash cans rolling around
  and garbage being ground.
    The trash men take the trash away
    on Garbage Day, on Garbage Day.
    The garbage men take the garbage away
    on garbage collection day.

Now by this time my shattered mind without a doubt was certain -
I rushed to part the curtain, and what should I observe:
great bags of green polyethylene that are so much the fashion
for putting all one's trash in and leaving at the curb.
  A smorgasbord to appetize
  the most discriminating flies -
  one dawn a week, upon my rise,
  such splendor greets my eyes.
    The trash men take the trash away
    on Garbage Day, on Garbage Day.
    The garbage men take the garbage away
    on garbage collection day.

By now these sounds and sights had found their horrid way within, so
I then threw up the window and last night's meal as well.
I gagged, I choked, I only hoped that powerful aroma
would put me in a coma to end that earthly hell.
  Foul fragrances flowed uncontrolled
  from meals a month or two too old
  upon which vermin rot and mold
  had somehow taken hold.
    The trash men take the trash away
    on Garbage Day, on Garbage Day.
    The garbage men take the garbage away
    on garbage collection day.