Song #6

Song #6 is loading onto rapidshare.com even as we speak. (tommydean/songwriter)

Here’s what a rain storm in late June does to a sensitive soul (a morbid soul?):

Maybe She’s Thinking of Me (c) by Tom Wernigg [6/13]

Six days of rain, it shows no sign of stopping
Stuck in our cells writing letters again
I’d rather stare blankly at the bare gray ceiling
And scrape at the wall with the nub of my pen

Half of my life I lay on my back
Thinking about nothing but desperate dreams
Nobody cares what you done on the outside
The blacktop makes every man here the same

All that I dream is covered in concrete
And the color of my life is the darkest gray
I sit here thinking I can’t face tomorrow
This morning I was thinking I couldn’t face today

Even the air tastes bitter and angry
I crave with each breath to be free
I’m lonely tonight thinking of Wendy
Maybe she’s thinking of me

When you come here they give you a cup and a towel
And they tell you that’s all a grown man should need
But my soul is starving for a single kind word
My body is starving for sweet Wendy Jean

Even the air tastes bitter and angry
I crave with each breath to be free
I’m lonely tonight thinking of Wendy
Maybe she’s thinking of me

For a Backdoor Parole you can Dance on the Blacktop
Doing the Dutch or take a Stainless Steel Ride
I’m hopped up on Bug Juice and stuck in the Ding Wing
There’s no Jackrabbit Patrol, and there’s no place to hide

That last verse didn’t make it to the recorded version. I made it up using Prison Slang a la Wikipedia. Rough translation:

In here you can die if you’re stabbed in the courtyard
You can take your own life, or you’ll be injected or fried
I’m hopped up on Prozac and stuck in the nut ward
There is no escape and there’s no place to hide

Fun, huh?

So, what’s that song about? Have you ever been to prison, Tom? Yeah, me and Johnny Cash.

He never was, by the way. Rumors to the contrary. Folsom Prison Blues came straight out of his head.

I have a morbid streak, it’s true. But I came by it honestly. Raised by a single mother with eight brothers and sisters in a busted mining town in West Virginia…or was it Kentucky?

I can’t write a paragraph more than two lines long. I must be itching to start writing the new song. Here I go.

Parenthetically, I turn 50 in 6 days. Which makes me more than half dead, as my son likes to put it. What a Prince.