Pest Control

[wot_i_wrote]

Mickey Mouse came to my door -
I saw him on my Ring.
He said, "Don't worry, mister,
I'm not selling anything."

I said, "I don't believe you!"
He said, "No, you heard me right,
but have you heard the good news
about extended copyright?

Here, I've got some pamphlets
and it's written in each one.
We didn't pay the writers
but they got free hats and gum.

There's aircon in the writers' room;
it keeps them off the streets;
the art's all by MidJourney -
take a few, they're kinda neat!

Best of all, it's work-for-hire:
the rights belong to us!
And with some friends in Congress
we'll still own it when they're dust.

We're gonna make some adverts,
all scripted by AI
and trained on diverse focus groups:
the scores are getting high^*.

Robots drive the cameras;
We won't pay the actors too:
They can whistle for their rate card
and God help them if they sue

'cause we own all the lawyers
and we've paid the judge's fee -
he likes to drive a motorhome;
we give him gas for free."

I said, "Mouse, you've got the wrong guy
unless you want a fight,"
and I showed him my union card
and said, "You see that, right?

There's power in a union,
power in the land.
You're messing with some forces
That you'll never understand."

The mouse said, "Hold on, mister, now,
I didn't mean to rile ya,
You know me, I'm just a clown and
trying' to raise a smile, yeah?"

He grinned at me and in his teeth
I could clearly see the shreds
of a million artists' dreams
And their plot-lines hung in threads.

So I said, "You ain't fooling' me
with soda and saccharine.
You're nothing but a parasite
on all our childhood dreams.

You come in through my TV
where I can't make a sound,
but you're stood on my porch now,
so I can stand my ground.

We've got some bullshit laws that
say the po-lice ain't so strict
and seein' how you're a rodent
ain't no jury would convict.

This right here's my shotgun,
though fuck the NRA,
and I got it set with buckshot
to keep vermin away.

So fuck you, Steamboat Willie,
and this scheme you've run for years."
I stuck the barrel in his mouth
and his brains blew out his ears.

So, now I'm on the run
and I had to leave that house
but I guess at least I'm famous:
I'm the man who killed the mouse.

Most of this came to me when walking to the House of Blues, Anaheim, past the Kingdom of the Rat. I was heading to the open mic at Lost Evenings VI, and performed it there (although that was a slightly earlier draft, about five verses shorter, in which our unreliable narrator was in the NRA).
*: I considered "the marks are getting high" here, for the sweet ambiguity, but in the end it didn't make the cut.