That Girl From Brownsville Texas - Jim White

I say «God, if you ain’t smiling on me, then you ain’t no friend of mine.»

It’s late at night and this motel room’s

drunk, I been listening to the lonesome wind crying.

My best friend once said,

«Jim, what you cling to, that’s the thing

that you had best forget.

For ain’t no rose bed ever gonna bloom in an untended

field of regrets."Guess I been busy

killing time counting bullet holes in state line signs.

I led a life of lonely drifting trying to rise above the buzzards

in my mind.

You get dizzy chasing 'round the tail of what you need

to leave behind.

Oh sweet Jesus, won’t you help me?

'Cause all I’m trying to do is plant them seeds of love with that girl

from Brownsville, Texas.

Midnight radio, a crackly

white gospel station kicking out the sounds of some half-assed revival.

Me, I never much cared for the feelings you get

«ing scriptures from out of the Bible.

For as the crow

flies I know only one cure for a permanent tear in your eye.

You

gotta crank like hell that rope on old sorrow’s well 'til the day

that the bucket comes up dry.

Now dreams are just

prayers without the put on airs… and though my history of dreams

is a scandal of back-assward schemes and romantic

disasters where Lord, you dealt me more cards than I could handle.

Still from the lips of this half-hearted sinner comes

the pledge of a half-baked saint.

'Cause Lord I might finally be willing to become the religious fool you always wanted me to be… if in return we could just tell that girl I’m the man you

and me both know that I ain’t.