The time has come to mothball one-time prime motor firm, General;
Can it succeed? It bleeds and bleeds; bailout needs, feeds--ephemeral.
Though the U.S. sans this address: -sance, Renais[1] seems heretical,
But that’s past tense, ’cause common sense and GM—antithetical.

They cranked out cars that looked like Mars-bound ships—the fins were comical.
They guzzled gas, no station pass; their swigging, astronomical.
And when the sheiks, those oily snakes brayed to U.S., “We got some news:
We’ll embargo; then car go? No! GM are fo’ them rotten Jews!”

While gas lines snaked, we all got sheik’d, but GM hadn’t caught the news:
It’s time to make cars that don’t take a full tank on a shoppin’ cruise.

Embargo passed and cars go, gassed again on a cheap calculus,
Because OPEC said, “What the heck,” pretended they’d be pals to us. . .
Early 80’s, they prod nates, “Ai, ai!” We went hysterical,
But then GM pronounced: “Ahem, sky-high prices, chimerical.”

The evidence to one not dense: more MPG. . .empirical.
And Chrysler, Ford can’t be ignored; they too made chariots that swill.

We hadn’t learned, and so we burned through petrol like fossil-fool sots;
GM was there to spume the air with fumes that made what’s once cool, hot.
We didn’t care and wouldn’t spare the cost; these cars looked fabulous,
Though made of tin. We hopped right in. . .rang our chimes. . .tintinnabulous.

But some said, “Wait, we must abate, or dire straits!” went their prophecies.
“No sweat!” GM, and Ford, and them were laugh-bent, went on scoffin’ sprees.
The things guzzled; we weren’t puzzled; in fact we jumped right in the door,
So unmuzzled, GM nuzzled at Congress, up the rim and more.

Which rim, you know: where licht[2] don’t go and from which bits o’ sh!t will pour.
Most noses brown in D.C. town, a swamp with boundless griftin’ whores.

To game CAFE[3], GM said, “Hey! the standards are not uniform!”
And so these shmucks put onto trucks’ frames, SUVs and true to form,
Creepy wacky D.C. lackeys blessed this mess, each a vegetable.
With moves so dumb, look what’s become of ex-best plum of General.

They pay much dough to those who blow it in ways exponenti-al--
Stupidity down in D.C. must really be congenital.

The pension plan could not withstand the strain and came unravelin’.
As fortune failed, old GM wailed and to Congress came cavilin’.
Their thieves-thick buds now kicked their butts, and then the commissariat
Said, “You must pare it down till there is left a firm with nary fat.”

It hadn’t helped that when firms yelped they’d come in private planes to see
Dudes on the Hill who make you ill; they all are banes and pains to me.
You’d understate the case to prate: “They wasted time sans strategy!”
They’d placed a bet. What did they get? A big loss in their gambling spree.

With hat in hand, they all grandstand. I ask, “What are you handin’ me?!”
What’s left to do? Add 2 times 2 to the digit in “Chapter 3.”

GM’s a firm started near turn of the previous century,
But now it begs on knees, not legs; to save it, no debenture spree.
It’s a sad state, but the said fate of GM looks ephemeral.
Tempus fugit, and so “F()ck it!” we say to shmucks once ven’rable.

Like EV1[4], the time has come to pull the plug on General.


1 GM is headquartered in Detroit’s Renaissance Center
2 light
3 Corporate Average Fuel Economy
4 On November 14, 2006, a documentary film debuted entitled “Who Killed the Electric Car?” The subject of the film is the demise of the EV1. Much of the film accounts for GM's efforts to demonstrate to California that there was no demand for their product and then to reclaim every last EV1 and dispose of them. GM responded to the film's claims, laying out several reasons why the EV1 was not commercially viable at the time. One theory discussed in the documentary is that the EV1 program was eliminated because it threatened the oil industry.