One, two, ready, go


I asked the man when Texas ended
He said, "If yer lucky it won't"
I said I gotta gift, I gotta get to Fort Smith
I was startin' to lose all hope
The night was young and he pulled out a gun
And the bullet just missed my nose
I thought I was delivered when I crossed the big river
I thought I knew, but I just didn't know


I passed over the Ozarks
And onto the Ouachita's
I skipped from poverty to poverty
Fenced in, in Arkansas, Arkansas


I saw the soybean fields and the flat-bed trucks
And I watched the concrete creep
Subdivided shoutin' on a black rock mountain
Sayin', "This is how it feels to be free"
I read the billboard scripture
Prophesying my damnation
Reaching for his life
Preachers on his third wife
Out in Branson on a big vacation



I passed over the Ozarks
And onto the Ouachita's
I skipped from poverty to poverty
Fenced in, in Arkansas, Arkansas


I saw a nuclear plant
Homegrown
And I know it ain't fake
'Cause they grew it in a lake
That they built just to cool its bones
And they handed out a lotta badges
And made a lotta energy
That they fired in a wire across state lines
While the state slurped up the fee

And there ain't hardly a place that meth ain't
Planted a dead white kiss
You can smell it in the air
You can see it in the chair
It's-a pretty damn hard to miss
I saw a law man shrug his whole body
Resign to an American god
Said, "If they wanted to, they would help themselves"
And then he put away his bible and he got out a gun



I passed over the Ozarks
And onto the Ouachita's
I skipped from poverty to poverty
Fenced in, in Arkansas, Arkansas




If God lives up in the Rocky's
If that's where the big man meddles
Then a lesser thing of a lower degree
Must'a come down here and settled
I met revelators and archimandrites
The big and the belittled
Deep in my mind
I reckon all in time
We're gonna meet somewhere in the middle


I passed over the Ozarks
And onto the Ouachita's
I skipped from poverty to poverty
Fenced in, in Arkansas, Arkansas


I can't tell ya where one thing ended and another did occur
It was new and it was old to me
It was more than I could observe
If what is seen is for the taking
And the taking can be seen
I'm gonna need your help with the calculations
I'm not sure what it all could mean



I passed over the Ozarks
And onto the Ouachita's
I skipped from poverty to poverty
Fenced in, in Arkansas, Arkansas