House of the Butterflies

You want to be a billionaire expat sex criminal
You want a private jet, private island
A driver, a pilot, and a team of lawyers
You want a Patek Philippe and Bill Clinton's number
You want to hit up your CIA handler for an Adderall scrip
You want a key bump and a ribeye the size of a briefcase
You want to be insulated, isolated
Floating miles above the city, serene, lotus position
One with the universe
You want to be vicious
You want to be formidable
But instead you get to find out what it's like
To live inside the open, sucking chest wound of a collapsed, demented empire
And the answer is
It's pretty cool i guess
As long as they keep those unemployment checks coming

You wanna be a slave owner
Relaxed and idle
Surveying the landscape from your veranda
Prone in your sumptuous daybed
Lips on a cocktail
Mind blank, blissful
Barely listening as your aide-de-camp relates news from the front
You don't want to be bothered with these implementation details
Who cares if the planes crash?
Who cares if the ships sink?
Isn't that why we have insurance?

You wanna be persecuted, hounded
Boxed in, nothing to lose
Let loose, snarling
Justified, forever excused
Never measured, not subject to the jurisdiction
Of the bloodless scrutineers
Exempt from the decrees
And given special dispensation
You want to be counted on, deputized, saluted
Decorated, admired, memorialized and mourned
You want to be sun-hot, burning to the touch
You wanna be an eclipse, suffocating, too bright to look at
Presenting yourself in your many armed form
The god of death and war
You want them to stop spitting in your milkshake
When you go through the drive-through
Well no dice, bitch! better luck next time!

House of the Butterflies
House of the Butterflies
House of the Butterflies
House of the Butterflies
House of the Butterflies
House of the Butterflies
House of the Butterflies
House of the Butterflies

You want to build something, get your hands dirty, level the foundation
Ride right up front in the bulldozer
Bullet-proof glass between you and those teenagers, let em throw their stones!
You want to hit paydirt, bedrock, solid marble
But the hydraulic pump pounds out a rhythm
Of liquefaction
And the mountain turns to slurry and slides into the river valley
Burying some wondrous, undiscovered ecosystem
That will never be recorded in your memoirs

You want to call a point of order, second the motion, ask for clarification of the bylaws
You want to move to censure, the gentlemen is out of order
You want the bailiff to restrain him
You'll have him barred from the premises
This is simply not how one behaves at Outback Steakhouse

House of the Butterflies
House of the Butterflies
House of the Butterflies
House of the Butterflies
House of the Butterflies
House of the Butterflies
House of the Butterflies
House of the Butterflies

You wanna have some psychedelic thrill
You want to commune with the ancients
You want to find the map to the astral plane
Well there's no such thing

In the House of the Butterflies
in the blink of a human eye
You can hunt
You can wound
You can kill
But you can never leave

In the House of the Butterflies
In the space of a spoken rhyme
You can run
You can scream
You can cry
But you won't be believed