I never could stand to drink that blood and call it wine.
I never did accept their wars and call them mine.
So I took to the highway never to look back.
From the Back Bay of Boston to San Francisco Bay
It was Highway 1 going south down to LA
Outside of Bakersfield I hitched a ride to Santa Fe.
I made it to Baton Rouge and met a Cajun lady with a Persian
cat
We spent the night in Circe’s ingle, in a houseboat on a
raft.
I hopped a freight train outside of Mobile go’n north to
Cincinnati.
Rode a boxcar with some hobos who’d been shift’n since Korea
They knew to jump off our wagon-lit from the doors in back
I jump out the front on the wrong side of the track.
That railroad inspector grabbed me and landed such a whack
He dumped out all the contents of my pack:
Norman Mailer in Chicago, James Joyce and Ulysses on the run.
Said his daughter had run away with someone called a bum.
He showed me her photo; nowhere to be found
I said I didn’t know her, that I was new in town.
He stood there look’n hard at me as I hit the ground.
The big man started shak’n, said boy you best be gone.
So I grabbed my belongins, which didn’t take me long.
The only thing I knew how to do was too keep on keep’n on.
