Locust

georgie, i can't stop drinking

seems like every time i try i can't stop thinking

georgie, when i was a boy

i would stand there in the shade

of a wedding cake hotel doorway

watching sister with her liquor in a jar

talk to older boys in cars.



Ether was the town where i was born

they pulled iron from the ground

and knife wounds from the port

they built a prison and it tempered in the sun

it rose up off a plateau like the last tooth in a gum

you went there by train and you would never be the same.



they made the blacks live outside of town

the weekend come they'd tear the whole place down

chinese came without weekends at all

and the whites complained the pay was better

shooting them in the war

home may be where the calm blinds

but i could see that they weren't lying.



my first girls old man was in a later war

he drank like a motherfucker, now i know what for

she took my van, put louie in the jack

left a suicide not and i've got him to thank for that

and he can thank our statesmen hosts

although his chances are remote



georgie, i can't stop drinking

seems like every time i try i can't stop thinking

georgie, when i was a boy

i would stand there in the shade

of a wedding cake hotel doorway

watching sister with her liquor in a jar

talk to older boys in cars.