Jim White: Hey! You Going My Way???

Bus stop rain...busted power train..got a broke down '69 LTD...
I hocked my tools...to buy my brain...a funeral wreath...from the FTD
Blank billboards on the highway of life. Counterfeit bills in the neon lights.
This stick-shift driven saw-dust dream, show-biz sho' ain't what it seems.
Little hipster dufus with the guitar in a coffin. I been copping his licks about every so often.
Then I flip-flop, go the other way...
I rip off the dude where the colored girls say; doo-doo-do-doo-doo-do-doo-doo-do-do-doooo-dooooo
See, I cut my teeth on the white lines of life's endless lonesome highways.
Taking stock in the horizon... shouting at every fool that come my way---
"HEY!" I been shouting,
"HEY! Can you gimme a ride? Are you going my way?"
"HEY! Can you gimme a ride? Someone gimme a ride!"
but ain't no one going my way.
Now downtown they got the prison of shame.
See the castaways of the Hollywood game?
Tricked out whores with invisible pains.
Cardboard people, dancing in the rain...
to the same old tune, circling like a vulture with the busted juke-box of the popular culture.
If it ain't got a beat, they won't put you on the street.
Heavy on the bass, light on the feet.
I meet the street poets in the bummed out bars.
I hum my single as I jingle down the
"Walk Of Stars"
with the geeks and the freaks and the crooks and the hookers---
the burn-outs of life's pressure cookers.
Now, these are my people, my church without a steeple,
and though I never waste a tissue on an incidental issue,
still I sympathize, 'cause I realize when I see the sorrow in their eyes.
'Cause I cut my teeth on the white lines of life's endless lonesome highways.
Taking stock in the horizon... shouting at every fool that come my way---
"HEY!" I been shouting,
"HEY! Can you gimme a ride? Are you going my way?"
"HEY! Can you gimme a ride? Someone gimme a ride!"
but ain't no one going my way.
Now in the field of my mind
I'm plowing the topsoil of my memory.
Digging up bones and skeletones--- rusty relics from my past.
Gotta put a new shine on the twists of time, redefine this old cemetery...
Clear out the weeds, sow new seeds, sure I'm scared, but still I'm gonna carry on.
'Cause never did a body find their way home without showing first firm as a stone
the conviction, the strength the courage that it takes to make a journey start
For you got to be true, you got to be strong,
'specially when the long road home
leads smack through the smoking ruins of your broken heart.And I know.
'Cause I cut my teeth on the white lines of life's endless lonesome highway...
Taking stock in the horizon...shouting at every fool that come my way---
"HEY!" I been shouting,
"HEY! Can you gimme a ride? Are you going my way?"
"HEY! Can you gimme a ride? Someone gimme a ride!"
but ain't no one going my way.