Song For A River Lyrics - Singles - Badlees

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