Music

Up every morning at the crack of dawn
Nights as short as the days are long
Life turned out to be another magazine
Livin’ with a stranger now
Girl i knew got away somehow
She went out with two bit gasoline
On the go,back - you know what i mean

Now when the word was Thunderbird
And the price recorded twice
Drinkin’ wine and lovin’ you was fun

Ah,but love turned out to be a passin’ thing
Different bird of a different wing
Some damn fool put a dollar twenty nine
On a jug of Thunderbird wine

And Lord i don’t know if i’m gonna make it
Don’t know if i’ll have the strength to take it
Everything’s hung up in yesterday

There’s you a secret-minded social girl
Takin’ short cuts in a woman’s world
She won’t let her hair down when i’m home
Society’s just slavery
And security is killing me
I work hard for it but i give it all away
If i could go back to yesterday

Now when the word was Thunderbird
And the price recorded twice
Drinkin’ wine and lovin’ you was fun

Ah,but love turned out to be a passin’ thing
Different bird of a different wing
Some damn fool put a dollar twenty nine
On a jug of Thunderbird wine

- Billy Joe Shaver

Should I hate a people for the shade of their skin
Or the shape of their eyes or the shape I’m in
Should I hate ‘em for having our jobs today
No I hate the men sent the jobs away
I can see them all now, they haunt my dreams
All lily white and squeaky clean
They’ve never known want, they’ll never know need
Their shit don’t stink and their kids won’t bleed
Their kids won’t bleed in the dad’s little war
And we can’t make it here anymore

Will work for food
Will die for oil
Will kill for power and to us the spoils
The billionaires get to pay less tax
The working poor get to fall through the cracks
Let ‘em eat jellybeans let ‘em eat cake
Let ‘em eat shit, whatever it takes
They can join the Air Force, or join the Corps
If they can’t make it here anymore

And that’s how it is
That’s what we got
If the president wants to admit it or not
You can read it in the paper
Read it on the wall
Hear it on the wind
If you’re listening at all
Get out of that limo
Look us in the eye
Call us on the cell phone
Tell us all why

In Dayton, Ohio
Or Portland, Maine
Or a cotton gin out on the great high plains
That’s done closed down along with the school
And the hospital and the swimming pool
Dust devils dance in the noonday heat
There’s rats in the alley
And trash in the street
Gang graffiti on a boxcar door
We can’t make it here anymore

James McMutry