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lyrics

Be a man, they said.
Get ready to get this point pounded into your head.
A ball-peen that rounded out the dents
of all the undeveloped gents
that went before you, don’t ignore
the boundaries that they bred.

We’ve engineered a way
to insure that you get paid,
and that your skin flute gets played
by the finest trophy-turned-to-maid.
Turned to mother when your seed is splayed
Better a boy, so he can keep your name.
And he better never show it if he’s afraid,
so he can be the man when you take your grave.

All you gotta do is be a man
All you gotta do is be a man
All you gotta do is be a man

And so the expectation simmers in us.
And that glimmer of hope, it glimmers in us.
Until it starts to feel like a shortfall,
and you can’t drop the subject of your balls

But what they don’t tell you, is it’s a mirage,
and it’s teasing you like a three dollar dancer.
A grown-up version of the Santa Claus,
ask twenty different people, get thirty different answers:

Cowboy up.
Rub some dirt on it.
Don’t give a fuck.
Don’t show you’re hurt from it.
Act like you’ve been here before.
Fuck all the bitches,
don’t fuck with the whores.

All you gotta do is be a man
All you gotta do is be a man
All you gotta do is be a man

And some will say we’ve been ripped off;
that we've let our children get too soft.
And maybe we should go back to when
we knew the boys had turned to men
when they publicly chopped the ends of their dicks off.
Or they caught a beast out in the brush,
and supplied a feast with a pelvic thrust.
And he’s called a man anywhere he go,
hears it everywhere but inside his dome.

And that’s the source for all this grief.
It’s not what you do, but what you believe
about yourself with no one else around.
Scared little voices make ferocious sounds.

All you gotta do is be a man
All you gotta do is be a man
All you gotta do is be a man

credits

from Five Ounce Mouth, released February 25, 2015
"Hoarse" by Earl Sweatshirt
from Doris (2013)

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Chauncey Gardener Springfield, Missouri

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