Constellation Blues

(album: Glad All Over - 2012)

You can tell a few things about the soul of a town
From the blood of the men gone in the ground
Bankrupt and buried by war that is carried out
By messengers now
Was born here and married too young staring
The nose of the barrel down
Went milk to whiskey to the courthouse sitting
With her stoned in her wedding gown

My birthday's in two months and I'll be twenty one
I am the second oldest to an only son
Third generation to carry a gun
I've got brown eyes like my mother does
First I saw blood was in a soldier's hair
Drying to his forehead in the dessert air
I knew his name once but his face I don't dare
Recall in the moments I go back there

Off the record do you see my tears
On my face and in my ears
As the silos reappear
And all of our journeys have led us right back here

There's something in the water we've been passing around
We've eaten the berries there is no doubt
Like our father before us in his paper crown
Kings of nowhere that was ever found
The angels that used to be guarding our beds
Have all wandered off and left us instead
Too strung out and much too sick to defend
Laying in the bathwater all lit up again

It's not a rumor it's more than true
There's nothing I wouldn't do
Be somewhere with only you
Share a little of these constellation blues

When it comes to my death let it be slow
May I be hunted in the hills I know
Let God be certain I was ready to go
But keep that secret from my children though