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Photocopier
I trudge wearily down the endless, dank, musty corridor
To the photocopying machine,
The foetid stench of old filing cabinets and stale, cheap coffee
Permeating through the lining of my nostrils.
Carefully I lift the machine's heavy lid,
Press the green copy button
And gaze through the murky, transparent glass
Into the blinding, ever-shifting light.
The paper feeds into the plastic tray
And, as I hold it up to my scrutinising eye
I see the distinct, carbon-copied outline
Of my face
I am a dreary office clerk
At the end of a weary day at work
5.30 - got to run
But the boss wants some photocopying done
Take the documents to the machine
Lay them on the transparent screen
When it's done, I turn it off
But the photocopying will not stop
Pha-pha-pha photocopier
At the end of the gloomy corridor
Churning out facsimiles
Filling the world with paper paper
Photocopies all it sees
Sheep and cows and birds and bees
Even copies human beings
Till we all are paper
Got to run - see you later
Jump on the escalator
Which one's which? - oh no
These flimsy paper stairs won't go
Copies people, copies shops
Trees and cars and stars of pop
Boys and girls and crows and babies
Prints of the laughing sounds of ladies
Pha-pha photocopier
At the end of the gloomy corridor
When it's done, it does some more
Churning out p-paper pee-p-people
We lament all that it brings
For it only copies rubbish things
Like TV formats, mobile rings
And tasteless, trashy records
Load/Scan/Copy/Print
And, as the dark and dreadful days went by,
The photocopier grew in size
Until it was bigger than a football pitch
It copied everything - the walls, the floors,
The street outside, even me
I tried to flee, but everywhere I went,
Photocopies of people I used to know sprang up in front of me
And when the machine had copied everything on Earth
A million, zillion times
still it grew, until it was bigger than Saturn
And it photocopied the Universe so many times
Nobody could tell which was which
Pha-pha-pha photocopier
At the distant edge of Outer Space
Doesn't care about our fate
Churning out loads of universes
Someone stop this block of hate
It's bigger than the Empire State
Get Tom Baker on the case
But even he can't save us
And so we arrive at the end of our chilling story of the photocopier
You may sit there in your comfy armchair and scoff
But don't you see?
The photocopier is a metaphor for our corrupt consumer society
Which insatiably regurgitates the same old trash over and over again
While feebly trying to convince us
That everything we see and hear and taste is new
Don't you see?
You fool!
I'm Gary Le Strange and I'm glad I'm cleverer than you
Words by Waen Shepherd 2004
Copyright Control
Released on "Face Academy" GLSCD003
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