Little Dead Bodies - Algebra Suicide

How right you are, dear Paul

That we hear of famous people’s deaths

While on vacation

Perhaps it’s so their funerals

Are not too crowded

With their loyal fans

Being out of town and all

Those celebrities

Are pretty clever

I’ve heard that someone’s born

Every 8 second

So I presume that someone dies

Every 8 seconds

Just to keep things even

It makes me feel shortchanged

When I read the obituary page

Someone’s holding back

Information

It also prompts me to flip through the telephone directory

On sleepless nights

Saying over, and over

And over again —

«Yep.

You’re all going

Every last one of you.»

Wow!

Heaven must be a big place

I don’t know too many dead people

But folks tell me I’m young

When my grandfather died

He was laid out in the Bubb

Funeral home

And I was secretly glad

Mr. Bubb didn’t change his name

To something more romantic

When he went into business

I just wish it was less memorable

My high school locker partner Ned

Worked part-time for a mortician

Imagine dressing dead people

Straightening their ties

And fluffing up their hair all so

You can afford to take a girl out to the movies on Saturday night

Well that’s love

That’s adolescent desperation!

I would have been honored to have Ned

Take me to the movies

And let him buy me popcorn

Instead, I went out with a boy who died

The hardest part was knowing that his body didn’t just disappear on the bed

The moment he left

I think that’s what keeps me off of suicide

The idea that there’s something left

For someone else to clean up

How rude and inconsiderate

It’s a pain to take out the weekly trash, l

Et alone figure out what to do with

Over a hundred pounds of flesh

That’s about to go bad

Then even worse

In India, where there’s a religious cult which believes you shouldn’t desecrate

any of the elements of the dead

They can’t be buried

Or burned

They can’t be cast out to sea

So they’re taken to the top of the tower of silence

Where they become

The vulture’s problem

How’s that for passin' the buck?

No, when I go, I want to go clean

Convenient, leaving no mess

As if I vaporized while taking a shower

As if I moved to Antarctica leaving

No forwarding address