Badlees Song For A River
of drunk reverie saw him escorted out of a mets game on network t.v. kept his head in the clouds with any cheap high he could cull in his cancered impala and his hog shirts and his head tapes played dull he lived in a company house in the pardeesville woods with a stir crazy dog and a graveyard of old "jimmy" hoods sudays we'd run for his stash at the new york state line that summer when moments of circumstance altered like wine (chorus) this is for the man this is for the days that we killed was it my wind of change or just a breeze at the top of the hill he didn't talk the gold ring he just schemed for a skeleton key but when you think you met thunder you only see what your head wants to see he threw back-mountain parties five deep at the "well" with his girlfriend, louise, who'd get lit and tell us all "go to hell" then he'd get liquored up and throw me his keys and yell "drive" with him and louise in the back doin' "american pie" he'd talk of out west over beer and the garbage that we ate 'bout the punk band he'd managed in phoenix in '78 i was this kid of sixteen the enamored impressionable kind in the poetic pull of the passion of life with the lines (chorus) he just disappeared that mid-august not even a shout then i red in the new that september that his time had run out how he tried to outrun a state trooper down 93 south a charge of possession is why he fled said word of mouth the paper said nothin' was left but the seats and the frame and i read in the write-up for the first time his real name; birthplace unknown, not from nowhere no close family just a wild running river that cut it too fast to the sea i still raise a glass once a year on the night that he died though hindsight says he only let me believe that we'd ride lord, he still taps a vein in my mind like a summer rain cools long after that river ran dry and reality ruled (chorus 2x) annalee11
