Breaking the Back

Yeah—on leaving school immersed in philanthropic notions

Of a kind these days I find unthinkable

I pulled my frail frame onto my charger

And rode off into the sunset with agenda predictable

Fresh faced, young-dumb-and tragically convinced

That blind faith could make an infantile normative playground theory on social interaction positive enough to show them all but alas—

Working the tills put hair on my chest, telesales made me a man

And everything was going to be ok, but the making of the man

Was the breaking of the back upon the rock of everyday hostility

Fresh faced, young-dumb-and tragically convinced

That blind faith could make an infantile normative playground theory

On social interaction positive

And I don't mean to seem, at all ungrateful

But the air-conditioned life has left me gasping for some real conversation

And just because Turing couldn't possibly conceive

A machine with this little personality

I'm working shifts in veal-fattening pens

And yet I'm puppy thin because to tell the truth

I been hanging on for something more than distant

Dialtones and a sense of ending, yeah

The breaking of the back was the making of the man