Southern Hospitality

Gary made an impression on me:

Thick skin ruddy,

Blue eyes like stormy skies,

Surrounded by a blood red sea

In the parts that are supposed to be white.

Everyone around Gary fights the same fight.

In this purdunck town with boarded up stores

And highways strewn with plastic flower memorials

They drink to escape.

Smoke to evaporate.

Gary tells me the neighbor up the street

Beat his wife to death with a baseball bat

Last veterans day.

What do I say?

"It's getting late."

Southern Hospitality;

Stories from a hard-lived life.

Gary is an inmate in this small town

A prisoner who eats pills

To keep his anger in check.

Gary is a big man.

A big man.

Gary is the big man who decided to stay

In the town in the woods

That everyone except Gary escaped.

"Driving their suped-up cars

Down that drunken highway".

The town shrunk as Gary grew.

Now Gary knows everything about nothing,

That's how he navigates -

With swollen hands like a fighter

Got a real tight grip on that steering wheel

As he drives me through town

In his rusted pickup truck.

Gary says "I'ma tell you sumptin, I'ma tell you what...

My feet go numb at night.

I got cataracts in both my eyes.

My mom lives up yonder in that trailer

Damn drunk kid almost drove into it.

Shit ain't right."

Gary pours another drink

It's 8 o'clock on Tuesday night

"Gotta lock your doors nowadays

Ain't what it used to be like."

But "I'ma tell you sumthin;

I'ma tell you now -

them Niggers and Mex'cans

Done took every job in this here town.

I'll tell you sumpthin;

I'ma keep my chin up.

I didn't get hired at the Dollar Store.

So what?"

Bonfire in the backyard

Children asleep on the floor

Gary drinks coffee at 1 am

Smokes homegrown weed to relax.

"I got a good life.

See them cars in my yard?

I'm gonna sell the parts one day

when I get round to it.

Least I GOT them cars -

It's a start."

Gary's hands stay swollen

Like he's been in a bad fight

Gary says "go to sleep."

He won't sleep.

"Feet hurt like hell at night."

In the middle of the woods

In Nowhereville USA

In a yard full of rusted cars

Gary can't afford to tow away -

There's a tree that shades his mother's house;

A massive tree

With a scar in its belly

Bigger than me.

Gary says

"That's from that drunk teenager,

He was killed instantly",

Gary sighs,

"Sad thing is now that trees gonna die.

Maybe I'll chop it down tomorrow

So it don't have to suffer".