of drunk reverie
 saw him escorted out of a mets game
 on network t.v.
 kept his head in the clouds
 with any cheap high he could cull
 in his cancered impala
 and his hog shirts
 and his head tapes played dull
 he lived in a company house
 in the pardeesville woods
 with a stir crazy dog
 and a graveyard of old "jimmy" hoods
 sundays we'd run for his stash
 at the new york state line
 that summer when moments of
 circumstance altered like wine
 CHORUS
 this is for the man
 this is for the days that we killed
 was it my wind of change
 or just a breeze at the top of the hill
 he didn't talk the gold ring
 he just schemed for a skeleton key
 but when you think you met thunder
 you only see what your head wants to see
 he threw back-mountain parties
 five deep at the "well"
 with his girlfriend, louise, who'd get lit
 and tell us all "go to hell"
 then he'd get liquored up
 and throw me his keys and yell "drive"
 with him and louise in the back
 doin' "american pie"
 he'd talk of out west over beer
 and the garbage that we ate
 'bout the punk band he'd managed
 in phoenix in '78
 i was this kid of sixteen the enamored
 impressionable kind
 in the poetic pull of the passion
 of life with the lines
 CHORUS
 he just disappeared that mid-august
 not even a shout
 then i read in the news that september
 that his time had run out
 how he tried to outrun a state trooper
 down 93 south
 a charge of possession is why he fled
 said word of mouth
 the paper said nothin' was left
 but the seats and the frame
 and i read in the write-up
 for the first time his real name;
 birthplace unknown, not from nowhere
 no close family
 just a wild running river
 that cut it too fast to the sea
 i still raise a glass once a year
 on the night that he died
 though hindsight says
 he only let me believe that we'd ride
 lord, he still taps a vein in my mind
 like a summer rain cools
 long after that river ran dry
 and reality ruled
 CHORUS 2X