Death of the Lighbulb

What's on the end of your Edison Screw?

What's on the end of your Edison Screw?

An ice-cream swirl or the eye of a fly,

The savings of advice at ten times the price,

Boxed with your dishes when you move to the coast,

Pass them to your kids with the doorknobs and nails,

But the lampshade is the fingerprint of your soul.

What's on the end of your Edison Screw?

What's on the end of your Edison Screw?

All that remains of a life-long dream -

Ten-thousand failures and a single living sculpture,

Bigger than brass Buddha, burning in a billion relays

Through two centuries on ceilings and bathroom mirrors

And Vegas - that's what it took for us to know

It was evil.

What's on the end of your Edison Screw?

What's on the end of your Edison Screw?

A cartoon halo for your delinquent dreams;

It marks you out for isolation and enslavement,

Lest your idle thoughts and hands defile

The eggshell-white canon of community;

The screw won't let us forget we were screwed,

But Edison met justice in the end.

What's on the end of your Edison Screw?

What's on the end of your Edison Screw?

It's the seed crystal of the spin off,

From the lamp-stand to the streetlamp

to the marquee, to the Christmas tree,

Then the digital clock, then the flat-screen TV.

It wants to fill every inch of everything you see,

Brought to you by dreamers who wallow in re-runs,

And that's the idea behind the switch:

Remember to turn it off when you leave.