Shrimp Suck

Everyone in my school

Is just a little shrimp

We’re decapodic runners

And arthropodic wimps

Covered up in fingernails

Just as ugly as can be

Now, sometimes we swim backwards

Makes it difficult to see

We’re scavengers and cannibals

We eat toxins in the muck

     Cause shrimp suck

     Oh, yes, we do

 

We're drifters out of Texas

We come from broken mangrove homes

We’re wanted dead or alive

By anything with bones

Wanted in the U.S.

And we’re big time in Japan

So, we’re chased both day and night

By the trawls of the shrimp man

But our value’s sinking down now

And our mercury’s rising up

     Cause shrimp suck

     Oh, yes, we do

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          We got carbon footprints,

          The size of semi trucks

          Without some sort of cocktail sauce

          We’re just tasteless schmucks

          Eat yourself a chicken, man

          A pig, a cow or duck

          Cause shrimp suck

          Oh, yes, we do

 

He starts to haul us in his net

And I can’t believe my eyes

There’s mud and silt everywhere

And starfish fill the skies

Turtles flat as flounders

And the reef’s been torn to bits

The seahorses are galloping

They’re running from the blitz

Though we’re the target species

They're all out of luck

     Cause shrimp suck

     Oh, yes, we do

​

© 2025 Mark Holmes. All rights reserved.