Jericho Road

This road called Jericho was our own Autobahn:

These same dirt miles I learned to drive this caddy on.

My bro said, "If your brakes fail, find the biggest lawn,

Or take aim at a mailbox, your speed will soften."

Watch the mailboxes all red and white like ev'ry farm,

White Sox cap is dangling out the window on your arm,

Temptation to reach out just a bit too far would leave

Your red cap alone and your wrist cradled in it's sleeve.

And you'd leave it lying there, out on Jericho Road.

Static from drive-thru speakers, so up on the hood

She jumped and shouted out our orders so they could

Hear her. The guys in line behind us whooped it good,

So she bowed once and curtsied like a real girl should.

She said, "Let's overpay!" (Her idea of a joke.)

"Why should we tip them?" I said, "Their speakers always broke.

Take these Hampshire coins, I won't need them no more for tolls."

My last pers'nal effects I gave the cashier in rolls.

And I left 'em in their hands, bound for Jericho Road.

Last night, outside the Sunset Motel

(That's where they filmed that Henry flick),

While mailing off some dozen letters to my friends,

I saw something that made me sick:

A half-dead possum by the white lines,

His body half-smashed to the soil;

I should've done what's right and grabbed my ice scraper

That lay in the back (by the boiled

Copy of Screwtape Letters read by John Cleese

The sun melted to the seat come last New Year's Eve

While I was occupied), but I could not get me

To move an inch unless to leave,

I had to leave.

She said, while (fin'lly) taking sips of Jack with me,

"These last six months have been hard on you, I can see."

Thought of red carpet wall smells of room #3,

Thought she maybe meant it when she said she loved me.

Still, I ordered her out of the car and shifted gears,

Watched me plow through all the mailboxes like empty beers,

'Bout a quarter of a mile up I locked on a tree,

Wrapped it 'round that birch while fire melts me to the seat.

And I left her standing there, down on Jericho Road.