WINTER OF DISCONTENT: Hobo with a Shotgun

Come listen to the story of a hobo who turned sour,
Dude got no name but he’s played by Rutger Hauer,
Rode into town on a freight train belchin’ steam*
But life on the streets is where it’s really unclean.

In a town called Hope, where actually there’s none
And the sign’s been repainted so the name’s now Scum,
Our hobo hero dude who ain’t go no name
Goes beggin’ on the sidewalk for a handful of change.

Ragged and dirty, ignored and overlooked,
All our guy wants to do is scrape up fifty bucks
To a buy a lawnmower from a pawn shop downtown,
Do yard work for cash, try to turn his life around.

But the seedy town of Scum (used to be called Hope)
Is ruled with fear by this crazy psycho bloke
Who wears a white suit though his deeds are deadly dark
And his psycho sons who are chips off the block.**

Then our hero meets a girl – a blameless innocent
(Or so he believes; she turns tricks to pay the rent).
When white suit psycho’s son starts jonesing for her bad
Cue hobo as a shotgun-wielding surrogate dad.

In a town that’s lawless, that’s morally destitute,
Where a paedophile cruises dressed in Santa suit,
Where the cops are corrupt and robberies are rife,
Death is dirt cheap but the cheapest thing is life.

In a place where the only career choice is crime,
Our hero cleans up the town, one deadbeat at a time,
Each pitiful pederast, each misogynistic male,
A join-the-dots corpse-strewn spent cartridge trail.

It’s a crusade that puts white suit and sonny-boy on edge;
Their empire crumbling, they call in The Pledge.
At this point a movie that’s already kind of mental
Buys a first class ticket to What The Fuck Central.

The Pledge are two bikers full-on dressed in armour,
Either they’re inhuman or they personify karma;
They’ve bumped off bishops and slaughtered men of state,
They keep a kraken in the cellar, a pet they love to bait.

‘Hobo with a Shotgun’ is one weird fucked-up flick:
Half of it is funny and the other half’s plain sick.
Viewed through alcoholic fug or substances proscribed
It’s an out-and-out cult classic, a trash fan’s wild ride.

But watch the thing cold sober and, buddy, you will find
It will (to quote Cartman) warp your fragile little mind;
It’ll leave your brain scrambled and your senses desiccated
And maroon you at a certain blog whose content’s agitated.



*All right, it’s a diesel. But I’m writing this mo’ fo’ in verse so I claim poetic licence. 

**Epic fail on the rhyming in this stanza.