Put Everything on the Fire Escape

Take the glass turtles
Take all the glass turtles
And put them on the fire escape
Put everything on the fire escape
Everything you can fit
All of it

Put the Salmon Rushdie posters out there
Put the copy of Midnight's Children
Put the bust of him
Right out on the fire escape

Gather up all the bowls
All the spoons
All the giant ladles
And put them all outside
All out on the fire escape

I want this apartment clean
Right before I leave it
Right before I take off
I've clung to these things
Like life rafts in a storm
And now I want to swim
I want to swim or drown
But I don't want to cling
Not anymore

Do you know how many people
In this rotten little town
Have sat in this apartment?

Do you know how much soup
I've made for people
When they were sick?

When they were heartbroken
When they were just broken
When they were broke or breaking
When they had nowhere else to go

And what happens once they're back up?

Then I'm a jerk
Then I'm dispensable
Then my soup doesn't taste so good

Well guess what?
All the soup?
On the fire escape
Every can!

Do you know what I realized last night
When I was laying in bed
Crying into a stuffed gerbil?

(No, I didn't stuff a gerbil.
It's a stuffed animal.)

I realized
That I could move to Italy
Do you realize that?

The only reason I'm here
Is because I've always felt
I had to be here
Because this was my home

Well let me tell you something
Home makes you feel good
And I feel lousy
I look around this place
And all I feel is awful

So why bother?
Why bother staying?
They'll say I ran
Hell yes, I ran

Would you look down on someone
For yelling from a burning building?
Would you call them a coward?
Would you ridicule them?

Those soup-eating assholes probably would
They'd probably keep right on eating their soup
While the house burned down around them

All I know is
I've got at least forty years of life
Left in me
Barring helicopter crash
Or coming into contact
With a flesh-eating bacteria

I refuse to spend the next forty years
Being surrounded
By crap and crappy people

I REFUSE!

So I'm going to go to Italy
I'm going to live in a villa
I'm going to eat risotto
And they'll all be back here
There is no better revenge than that
There is nothing better
Than leaving them all here
To snipe and snap at each other
Like starving dogs
Locked in a cage

And every time they drive by my apartment
They'll see all my things
All my worldly possessions
Sitting out on the fire escape
And they'll know I'm gone
They'll know I left
And I'm not coming back

They'll know I left it all behind me
And somewhere I'll know
I'll know they're driving by
And I'll wave
I'll wave and smile