Three Minute Limit

Standing at this open mike’s like staring down the barrel of a gun,
Tune your guitar, head off into the bearpit, prepare yourself for the hit and run.
Say “here are some little songs of mine,
Concoctions of rhythm and rhyme,
I hope you’ll listen to my songs
I won’t detain you for too long,
Just ten minutes or so of your precious time..”

“Play us something we know”, somebody groans,
So we can carry on talking and playing with our phones,
Wonderwall,Valerie, Britney Spears,
Then we might listen out of the corner of our ears
But all too soon we’ll let you know,
We’ve reached our 3 minute limit, our 3 minute limit,
So off you go.

At first we might appear to be listening to what’s going on,
But don’t expect our attention span to last until the end of the song
The amplifier starts to feed back,
As you start to lose your track
Determined you still perservere,
Think ”what on earth am I doing here?”
Trying to compete with this wall of clack.

“Play us something we know”, somebody groans,

Let’s switch up the volume to full to try to compete
But pissed up we all just shout louder with wall to wall gobble and tweet
At the end of this total lost cause
You might get a ripple of applause,
When “Oh my God” someone screams
As something comes up on their screens,
You wonder why did you ever walk through these doors.
“Play us something we know”, somebody groans,