The Origin of Love

When the earth was still flat and clouds made of fire
And mountains reached up the sky, sometimes higher,
Folks roamed the earth like big rolling kegs.
They had two sets of arms; they had two sets of legs.
They had two faces peering out of one giant head
So they could watch all around them as they talked while they read.
And they never knew nothing of love, it was before
The Origin of Love.

Now, there was three sexes then
And one looked like two men glued up back to back
Called the Children of the Sun.
And, similar in shape and gerth was the Children of the Earth;
They looked like two girls rolled up in one.
And, the Children of the Moon looked like a fork shoved on a spoon;
They were part-Sun, part-Earth, part-daughter, part-son.
The Origin of Love.

Now, the gods grew quite scared of our strength and defiance
And Thor said, "I'm gonna kill'em all with my hammer like I killed the giants!"
But Zeus said, "No, you better let me use my lightning-like scissors,
Like I cut the legs off of whales, dinosaurs into lizards."
And, then he grabbed up some bolts, he let out a laugh,
Said, "I'll split them right down the middle, gonna cut'em right up in half!"
And then storm clouds gathered above into great balls of fire...

And then fire shot down from the sky in bolts like shining blade of a knife
And it ripped right through the flesh of the Children of the Sun and the Moon and the Earth.
And some Indian god sewed the wound up, pulled around to our belly to remind us the price we paid.
And Osiris and the Gods of Nile gathered up a big storm
To blow a hurricane
To scatter us away
In a flood of wind and rain
In a sea of tidal waves
To wash us all way
And if we don't behave
They'll cut us down again
And we'll be hoping 'round on one foot
And looking through one eye.

The last time I saw you, we'd just split in two.
You was looking at me, I was looking at you.
You had a way so familiar I could not recognize
'Cause you had blood in your face, I had blood in my eyes.
But I could swear by your expression that the pain
Down in your soul was the same as the one down in mine.

That's the pain.
It cuts a straight line down through the heart
And we call it "love."
We wrapped our arms 'round each other,
Tried to shove ourselves back together.
We were making love... making love.

It was a cold, dark evening such a long time ago
When by the mighty hand of Jove,
It was a sad, sad story how we became lonely two-legged creatures.
The Story... The Origin of Love

-- Hedwig and the Angry Inch