The Billion Dollar American Haircut

The Billion Dollar American Haircut

I never play the lottery
This week I played the lottery

I thought
  What it would be like to win all that hair
     Shimmee-and-a-shake in a Beatle wig

I let them take a little clipping
  Which they put into a basket, then
Other people let them take little clippings
  Which they put into that same basket

They put that basket into a bigger basket
Which went into a bigger basket
Which went into the biggest basket ever in the world

And we all thought
  What it would be like to win all that hair
    We could make a new Woodstock and close the New York Thruway, Man!
   
  Nobody won all that hair

  Repeat

Mean while, 2/5ths of the hair went to government wigs,
  George Washington had a whiter wig
  Lincoln had a fuller beard
  Hamilton did a Broadway jig
  Jackson was replaced by Harriet Tubman
  Grant had his nose hairs plucked
  Franklin had a new fur collar on his coat

Don’t believe me? Look at your money

And we all thought
   Wow, that’s what it looks like to win all that hair
      Let’s get King Louis pompadours, and call it macaroni

  Repeat

Except this time
  Somebody won all that hair

Nobody I knew won all that hair
Everybody I knew was balding
I’m balding

We don’t resent them
  Like sheep to be shorn we stand on line again
We stand on line again to be clipped again
  We stand on line again to give hair we can’t afford to lose

We all thought
  Wow, somebody somewhere is in a room with all that hair
I wouldn’t know what to do with all that hair
  The things I could do with all that hair, like maybe …

My ears are cold,
  Did I ever tell you ‘I love ‘Ewe” ?