The Mommy Effect

Lyrics

The Pentagon is calling it the "mommy effect" as if it were vertigo as if it were faces in the white noise and deja vu and not something concrete like heels on hardwood or belts made of leather All across the country, they say, young men and women eager for opportunity but short on options weightless shoulders unburdened aching for straightening hair overgrown overwhelming the rounded corners of youth Young men and women ready to cut themselves open for apple pie and baseball Young men and women, they say, are being snatched away by their mothers before they can sign their names in the sand before they can know their sweet and fitting end Enlistment is down and the FBI's Most Wanted List is full of women in their mid-forties high rising jeans and sequined sweaters and they're calling it "the mommy effect" as if umbilical cord lassos were crashing through recruiters' windows to greedily reclaim their cargo These mothers, they say are bleeding this country of its verility crushing its warheads between thumb and forefinger and they're calling it "the mommy effect" As if it was sweet and sunset and cursive whispered in forgotten tongues through clouds of incense and swinging pocket watches and not something concrete Like "Kyle, if you join the army I will kill you myself." They're calling it "the mommy effect" as if hysterical shrieking banshees wanted to dress us up in sailor suits to suck us back into their wombs As if these overprotective basket cases could never fully grasp just what is at stake here But how easily we forget that mothers have never been pacifists They've only fought every war ever undertaken before those wars were begin and long after they've ended They only know their children's stories too well Understanding that this shit isn't Star Wars This shit isn't Harry Potter Our mothers only know that sending their children away for a red and white striped greater good is not a sacrifice It is a sacrifice. The ignorant spilling the blood of the innocent to quench the thirst of a fool's god Virgins thrown to the wolves And somewhere close, a child is sitting in a clean air conditioned office talking to a man composed entirely of right angles Promises hang on the wall ripe for plucking and a shiny silver pen is exactly three heartbeats away from a tangled thicket of jargon, platitudes, and lover's whispers A man is smiling but exactly two heartbeats from now A lean and muscled arm is going to erupt from his throat shattering that smile from the inside as a small woman hair curlers still in and rolling pin firmly in hand climbs out of his head like a combination of Alien and Athena Lightning will ricochet between her irises and with a voice four octaves lower than God's She will say "You had better get your ass back in the house!" The child will, of course, obey and the sore-throated recruiter won't know how to explain it, but they're calling it "the mommy effect"