Litterature

The Larynx Mutiny

The first time I saw the anti-smoking PSA featuring this woman I was fascinated. Her voice was amazing, and I found myself immediately imagining what it would be like to hear her sing. Some time later, I saw some other PSA, with an older gentleman singing in a country band, with the same apparatus. His voice was magnificently alien, but I couldn’t shake the image of a seductive diva singing in the drone of a robot. To wit…"The Larynx Mutiny".

You’re beautiful
with the red painted on your lips
and so dutiful
I light your cigarette’s tip
You suck it back
inhaling seductively
There goes a whole pack
in the course of an evening

And you just want to feel alive
like those ladies on the signs
you remember from when you were a child
But now the larynx mutiny
has made you a monstrosity
and you can’t even bear to leave the house

Sweet Maria sing for me
like a kitchen appliance malfunctioning
They took your throat and replaced it with a ring
to save the life you were forfeiting

With every breath
we draw closer to death
but some hastening
lingers in the air
You can’t compare
to sick children or famine waifs
but a cautionary tale
you remain all the same

And for one fitful final time
you just want to feel alive
like you did when you were young
But the doctors and their surgeries
have ruined all your revelry
but that’s what got you here in the first place

Sweet Maria speak to me
in the burring of a bumblebee
You think you’re ugly but you’re not to me
Survival is really quite lovely

It’s bittersweet
the choices that we make
are statistically
the chances that we take
Realistically
the odds are against us all
but foolishly
we try to exert control

And you don’t want to die alone
in some moldy nursing home
like those relatives you never saw
But now a vain society
leaves you abandoned and lonely
and there’s not anyone for them to call

Sweet Maria speak to me
speak to me…

…and a shrill, grim tone pours from the EKG

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