Shed Some Skin

It's Christmas Day in gay Paris

Not so gay for Galen Z

Sixteen hours in a sweaty kitchen

For money makes minimum wage look good

Six a.m. on the subway

Stop station, through the doorway

Crowds of people standing, yelling, screaming

"What's going on? Oh no, I must be dreaming"

And the city forgets, they didn't even perceive

And the trains keep blowing up, week after week

Franzel's traveled wide and far

Back from the U.S.S.R. 

Went there to pursue a lifelong calling

You found only numb toes and helpless longing

Now you're back at home today

Back in the old U.S.A. 

Scoop up handfuls of your native dust

And cross the country in a Greyhound bus

Another failed attempt, it's no use trying to pretend

Now you're right back where you started again

I saw what's wrong

But I didn't see how

I saw, I saw

We're all grown up now

Today's your twentieth birthday

Alone you walk the banks of Maine

As time runs out to write the second verse of

"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

While you're gone, we'll be here still

Just beyond those distant hills

Could be that you got the upper hand

When you left this rustic never-never land

And my breathing constricts, I feel the walls closing in

Could it be that finally we're all shedding some skin?