Johnny 99

I saw the kid run

Run like he’s on fire

And doesn’t wanna be

Put out

Crowds in the stands

Crowds on the streets

Kid can run

Kid can’t outrun

That’s how you wind up

In a big bad circle

With finish lines

In your mind

Kid’s got bad blood

And the blood belongs

To Johnny 99

If you’re a ghost of the plant

That means retail’s all you’ve got

Shifts at the gas station

Shifts at the nursing home

Shifts doing security

For construction sites

You spend your money on beer

You spend your money on weed

You save what you don’t spend

And there’s nothing

You don’t spend

You’re spent

So you run

And hope somebody sees

Hope somebody gives you

Someplace to run

The saddest sentence

In the world is--

I knew your Dad

Not to mention when

All you knew

Was what you heard

At a second-floor barbecue

At the three-family

On Vincent Street

The kid all the girls like

The kid with the car he fixed up

The kid on the high school team

Who seems better

Than he should be

That’s Johnny 99’s kid

Next thing you know

You’re on the bleachers

Trying to see what lives on

After the people who made you

Are gone

His Dad got fried

And his mother died

In a car accident

Outside of town

He was dropped by the system

Now he lives with an aunt

Who can’t remember

To feed the kid

I wonder if he knows

He’s working at the same store

Every night

Where his Dad shot that clerk

After he got laid off

We all wind up back

Wherever back is

No matter how far

We think we’ve come

After the game

I drove by the store

To see if he was working

But that was the night

He went out with his friends

To knock a few back

Celebrate a good game

That was the night

He knock a few too much

Wrapped his car

Around the same kind of tree

That took his mom

One less runner

On the road

One less prisoner

Trying

To make their escape

Cement up the hole

That they carved

In the jailhouse wall

Tell their story

To anybody else

Who looks like

They’re thinking

Of making a run for it

Write a song about them

Sing it when your throats

Not all choked up

Say you have a memory

Of something

That you only half-heard

Think about when

Your sentence is up

Think about the clock

Going back

From 99