Alternative Girl

Kurt Cobain is dead, so as his body a-molders,

Alternative Girl, can I cry on your shoulder?

I'll wipe salty tears with your flannel shirt

and hold onto your hand to ease unending hurt

I saw you at a show just the other night

and you were lookin' alternative all right

Whether dancin' around or just standing there

with your overalls and Docs and the dye in your hair

You looked so much like all of your friends

who try to be different by following trends

You were smoking your Camels and bobbing your head

I thought you were cool for making yourself dead

There's nothing like a girl who reeks of rank smoke

like the kind in my heart full of coals that you stoke

Later I saw you with some punk pals at Denny's

like a flower with earrings in a field of many

Acting like a rebel in the rebel crowd

driving 'round in your van with the radio loud

So come with me to a coffeehouse joint

We'll drink lots of coffee and say "What's the point?"

We'll talk about Beats and wish we lived then

so we could have been posers who got into Zen

We'll curse being labelled as "Generation X"

while we watch MTV and have lots of sex

We'll go to Lollapalooza and dress really punk

and get covered with mud and buy overpriced junk

and wear the t-shirt to school just to show that we went

and sneer at the teachers whom we often resent

'cause they lived in the sixties when the youth had a cause

whereas all we can protest are the bountiful flaws

of an upper-class life with our parents the squares

and the trouble with us is that nobody cares

We've got nothing to say and we think even less

which naturally causes us endless distress

So then we'll start our own music 'zine

and write lots of  reviews and be slightly obscene

with a old worn-out typewriter and a bottle of glue

and a friend at the copy shop who's alternative, too

Then we'll pass it around in our circle of friends

who act sad and depressed and sit on their rear ends

as they bitch about life in the suburbs with Dad

and they couldn't get a car so now they're so sad

O the Angst! the despair and the unfounded woe!

O the things we won't do and the places we won't go!

It's ok to be lazy! it's ok to be glum!

'cause we'll live in a world full of cloves and of rum

So let's wear lots of black and buy numerous books

that we'll carry around to draw numerous looks

from our peers at the clubs who buy Sartre and Camus

but can never quite read it 'cause they're always so blue

And we'll stay up all night and fall asleep on the floor

Alternative Girl, who could ever want more?

Mike Janssen