Lyrics

4) White Moon - m.litton

White Moon was a Southern Cheyenne, Oklahoma Indian
From the red dust ‘n cactus he had grown
With an army bag, a guitar case
He left his home on a Greyhound Stage
Singing, “Our lives will meet on the rim…”
From the Washita to Wichita
Down every city street he saw a dead-end

White Moon went out to Kanorado, Kansas
To play the harvest dances
Where he strayed into a white daughter’s bed
They ran him out in the spring
When the ponies shed and the prairies sings

White Moon soon had so many reasons
But he never told Jesus
He had a devil on his tail
He played it hard, burned his bridge
And blazed his trail to the very edge
Out in Denver, up to Cheyenne, back in Omaha
From town to town he picked guitar
And traveled by the Northern Star like an outlaw

White Moon served time down in Texas
He never would believe the west was won
In Dallas when he took the stand
He said to the judge, “You stole my land…”

White Moon wore a tattoo on his right forearm
Of a scorpion dancing in a flame
Beneath the tavern’s whiskey lights
He sang of Ira Hayes’ frozen life
And those desert-sand-snake ‘n wailin’ wind songs
For the lonely ‘n deeply scarred
So their bitter angry hearts could beat along

White Moon got a long-knife wound
In a Santa Fe saloon
He’d lay his life down on every play
“It’s the high mountain dream
And a low valley grave for the song I sing…”

White Moon sang on all the borders
Every red-light quarter
He’d step down at midnight from the crowds
Then lay awake with a whiskey glass
In a boarding house as the trains roared past
As the diesel smoke curled up to the neon
And the winos ‘n café whores
Came like music through his door into his songs

White Moon shared his last bottle
Out in Rifle, Colorado
With a Badland Dakota and a Sioux
Then he pulled a knife, heard the drum
And ran into a bluecoat gun

Singing, “Out lives will meet on the rim…”
And the red clouds put their bloody stain
Above the white winter plains just for him