Once i was a supercargo
My own V.O.C.
The great white God of great white goods

With shoes upon my feet
And for that they wrack their minds in pidgin
Thinking i'll return

But i'm not an American
I've never worked alone


Yeah, it's like we're never there

They say "our John Frum's coming,

He's bringing cargo..." and the rest
At least they don't expect to be
Surviving their own deaths

It's probably not a good thing
To believe in all that %#@!
When one way or the other

You'll get thrown into a pit.

Yeah, it's like we're never there


And i am ruin borne by sea
The stone age smoked by dysentery

I'm patient zero to the lusts of Papuans
Who trade one woe for another one


South of the isle of Pentecost
I wound up on my back
If they want to see me one more time

Then typhoid's seeing to that
They are just like all the white folks
The whites are just like them

They take pain and superstition
And then they call it something else
And they build airfields in the jungle

That no plane can land on
Fill me with penicillin
That %#@! don't do nothing at all

But then everybody's got their price
Most just go a little cheap
Thinking the best the rest are hoping for

Is to be dying in their sleep
You want to make good with a cannibal?
You've got to show him how to freeze a priest


Yeah, it's like we're never there