Mark Young e-mailed the lyrics to me. Thanks, Mark. It's a powerful song.
-Joe Offer-

The Great American Dream
David Massengill

Excuse me sir... I am a foreigner
I left the white sands of Zanzibar
Where is this place you call free lunch bar?

I am hungry and have overstayed my visa
I'll work your farm your factory your pizzeria
Is TV more beautiful than the Mona Lisa?
Someday my sons will I fight for the eagle
My daughters will never be ashamed of me
It is my dream... to be a citizen

CHORUS:
It's the Great American Dream
It's the Great American Dream
It's the Great American Dream...

Excuse me sir... I am a prostitute
Just pretend that I'm a Playboy bunny
For a Franklin I will tone your tummy
My body is a battlefield and a flower
Four score and seven tricks by the hour
O the many men--one might have been my father
Gonna make my getaway in a zeppelin
Take a bubble bath in the fountain of youth
It is my dream... to be a girl again
In the Great American Dream...

Excuse me sir... I am a carpenter
Once I built a treehouse for Rockefeller
Tho' now I've been laid off since December
Someday I'll build a castle all my own
In the den the best laz-e-boy throne
In every room a different color phone (MRY: alternatively: "I'll finally have a place to call my own")
These torn hands are skilled as spiders
I hear there's work in Kansas building coffins
It is my dream... to be cremated
With the Great American Dream ...

Excuse me sir... I am an Indian
O the white man is as greedy as fire
His heart is wrapped around with barbed wire
My father died of whiskey and religion
But ghosts are cheap on the reservation
In the summer we're a tourist attraction
It is wrong to squeeze the earth like a snake
A deceit to give a stone to the hungry one
It is my dream... to skin a Pilgrim
And the Great American Dream


(Following verse- lead sung by Joan Baez on live version)
Excuse me sir... I am Everyman
I'm the good thief of Jekyll and Hyde
I'm a social climber on a mountain of pride
I'm the deaf the dumb and the debonaire
I'm the mouse the monk and the millionaire
I'm the Great White Hope riding an old grey mare
I'm the sad-eyed girl as young as the earth
I'm the mother who died giving birth
To the Great American Dream
I love freedom
I hope freedom loves me...

The Great American Dream - David Massengill (available on his CD "The Return"; live version possibly available on cassette still, or out of print)
MRY