Age Of Treason

On a lone and windy hilltop
Beneath a roof of tin
In a little wallpapered bedroom
I done my growin'
'Twas there I dreamt my dreams
There I hung my jeans
And wandered through puberty as all do

My mother was a tight knot
Bound up with false guilt
Strapped up in her fearing
Wall she had built
An independent girl
In a dark and cruel world
She'd lost the way to say
"OK, now lay back"

We disagreed on most things
I shouted peace and love
The family of mankind
The symbol of the dove
She only saw the surface
Of things before her face
But I was young and argued on for hours

My father he liked poetry
A scholar he might have made
Had he not born a poor boy
Barefoot and underpaid
So the man worked with his hands
Up and down the land
His dreams forgot
He thought that I must follow

With his marks as worker's wisdom
He'd read a thing or two
He once had been a Mason
But he never followed through
Always kind and thoughtful
Smelling of machine oil
And he read me poetry of visionaries

I flunk my way to college
A looser kind of school
But we bobbed and played time
Arty feeling cool
A chance to live an artist
Diggin' the ravin' scene
Reading Kerouac and Ginsberg well deuced

I was not academic
Art and English neat
The history of mankind
I liked that I did
And what was I to do?
The choices they were few
A down-right disgrace to the working classes
A down-right disgrace to the working classes
A down-right disgrace to the working classes
A down-right disgrace to the working classes