Walk On

These are the words
That cry out of me in the night
Like a buffalo herd
From a shotgun blast scattered in flight
I got a one track mind
Going down a one train line
Living on dreams half the time
Going west

I gotta pick up speed
Just to get what i need
The end of the line guaranteed
Your love is my rest

The coal catches fire
I'm down the wire in a flash
That big old smoke stack
Is belching out black smoke and ash
So sad to think of
Hurting the one you love
But surely that's what leaving does
You'd know best

I gotta pick up speed
Just to get what i need
The end of the line guaranteed
Your love is my rest
Your love is my rest

We pass through the land
Of custer's last stand
And i grin
So this is where old yellow hair's
Ghost dance begins
I got the blood on my hands
Can't even live where i stand
I'm just a traveling man
Cursed or blessed

I gotta pick up speed
Just to get what i need
The end of the line guaranteed
Your love is my rest
Your love is my rest
Your love is my rest

I'm sitting on the toilet
With my sunglasses on
Wondering what you are up to
This hotel's got bathroom telephones
But i don't want to interrupt you
You might be painting your nails
With your hot curlers on
Each one a different color
Or listening to that beach boys sailing song
Sloop john b or another

Chorus:
Ethylene, my ethylene
My love for you is just obscene
My deer you dress
My fish you clean
But you are nowhere to be seen
My ethylene

Well you could bag your limit
With a bow and arrow
Yeah you could skin a cougar in the dark
Well i thought we were walking
Down the straight and narrow
How'd we ever drift so far apart

I took my eighteen wheels
On this road to nowhere
And you disappeared right up in the hills
Like smoke up a chimney
Girl, i go there
Yeah in my dreams i visit you still

Chorus

Now some men will drive
To the edges of nothing
So they can take a peak at the great abyss
Some men avoid love
Like it was a plague or something
So they can leave the seat down
When they piss

I miss that crocheted thing
You kept on the kleenex box
I miss my feet
On your cold linoleum floor
Sippin hot coffee
After makin love till daybreak
Well ethylene a fool would ask for more

Chorus twice

My ethylene, my ethylene, my ethylene

You finally found the mainstream
In the middle of your life
You tapped into a vein
Of endless gold chains
Now you're locked up tight
Tearing down the middle of it
Splitting it right in half
Bobbing up and down the waves
Like a runaway slave
On a huck finn raft

Chorus:
Take your wife
Take your family
Take your gun
Running through the woods
And the burned out neighborhoods
Looking for someone
A member of your tribe
A place you can hide
'til the war has begun
'cause in the fields before the flood
You'll be spilling blood
Like a native son

Where you gonna run to
There ain't no underground
If only you could fly
You'd cut across the sky
Like a rifle round
Oh, who are your people
And where is your homeland
'cause they're dying side by side
At the river of pride
Where we tried to take a stand

Chorus twice

In the fields before the flood
You'll be spilling blood
Like a native son

Tonight i'm howling at a foreign moon
Might as well be a junkie's spoon
For all the light it's given me
Sinking in my misery

It's been forty days and forty nights
Darling since i held you tight
I walk the desert of my dreams
I got to get out of here before i scream

Too much take off, too much landing
No such love, no understanding

Chorus:
I can't wait baby till you're by my side
I can't wait baby though you know i've tried
I can't wait baby just one more ride
I can't wait till you're by my side

Could you crawl through your telephone
Girl i'm so tired of being alone
I'm talking to walls in my hotel room
Around the world in a sonic boom

Some close calls and some near misses
All i want is your sweet soul kisses

Chorus

For all the noise on my hometown street
Little children playing at my feet
Well i would give my soul to be
Back in your arms in tennessee

Too much take off, too much landing
No such love, no understanding

I can't wait baby till you're by my side
I can't wait though you know i've tried
I can't wait just one more ride
I can't wait, can't wait
Baby till you're by my side

I can't wait baby till your by my side
I can't wait though you know i've tried
I can't wait just one more ride
I can't wait till you're by my side

When that howling wind
Comes to carry you again
Just like your next of kin
You must go
To a far away place
Where you don't recognize one face
Don't unpack your old suitcase
Cause you must go

Chorus:
You must go and you must ramble
Through every briar and bramble
Till your life is in a shambles
Maybe then you will know
You were born to blunder
Born to wander, born to wonder
Even when you're six feet under
There's place
That you must go

It is something you done
Are you loyal to no one
Turn your back on the sun
And you must go
It it something she said
You keep this all up in your head
Now your face is turning red
And you must go

Chorus

Love is in the air
You can smell it everywhere
Its in your clothes, it's in her hair
Ah, you better get out of there
It's gonna take a midnight train
To straighten out your winding brain
Like a snake in the rain
You must go

Chorus

Well she was a millionaire
Before she was fourteen
But there was an emptiness there
That to practically everyone else could be seen
She hit up on the drug of love
Though there was no hole in her arm
There was a hole some place else
About as big as dady 10.000 acre farm

Chorus:
Oh, she was dying for it
For all the world to see
Ah, she was as good as she could be

Well she had a baby at eighteen
Never finished high school
Her husband beat her for money and sex
Till that cadillac finally ran out of fuel
One disaster led to another
Down to her and her baby son
Born with a silver spoon in her mouth
Headed south now
Cause she was never born to run

Chorus twice

Well her momma died last year
And her daddy he called her back home
But when he opened the door
He could not recognize
This spectre of hair and bone
But it was his own baby child
Though she looked like an old woman now
Well she lived ten lifetimes in five years
Anywhere that the law would allow

Chorus twice
Yeah, she was good as she could be
Ah, she was good as she could be

Oh the river knows your name
And your tears falling like the rain
All around you suffering and pain
Oh the river knows your name

And the river hears you cry
As the lightning cracks the open sky
As your momma sings a lullaby
Oh the river she knows why

Let the river wash you down
Beneath the surface with a rushing sound
Like a freight train passing through a town
Let the river wash you down

Let the river take away
All the words you and i could never say
In the silence darling let us pray
Let the river take it all away

Oh the river she knows your name
From the brazos to the wabash to the seine
No two journeys are ever quite the same
But the river knows your name
Oh the river knows your name