A Man Needs a Vocation

Lyrics

The trip was pretty bleak But it was cheaper than the train Disembarked during a summer storm Got hammered by the rain As he hobbled down the frontage road With a footlocker and in a fair amount of pain From a payphone at the station He called on some old friends And a guy that he'd played football with Said he could take him in On a blanket on a mattress In the basement by the furnace He was home again But he'd been gone for long enough That something wasn't lining up This distance didn't exist before The plexiglass at liquor stores The wretches in the parking lots The torches in the smoking shops Everything felt twice as hot to him Started ringing up the register At a Sinclair down the street Started saving up and bought a truck Started sleeping in the backseat In the morning when he wakes up There's a pamphlet on the windshield With a cartoon of a shepherd Tending to some cartoon sheep Said we'll walk you through the paperwork The course takes twenty weeks With a military discount The divinity comes cheaply and discreetly In classrooms in an office park Fluorescent lights against the dark Long rows of unsteady desks He memorized the sacred texts That earned him the certificate That led him to a place to live And though he didn't believe in it He was quite convinced A man needs a vocation So he drove out to Fishersville Without saying goodbye There was never really anything to say 'Cause the guys that he played football with Were all starting to die And it still felt pretty pointless when he prayed He'd been there for long enough To know the savior won't show up The distance between everything And Daniel back in Washington The way it hung above his head The wretches in the tanning beds Turning up the torch again Virginia with your rolling hills The cities with their easy thrills The clinics with their sliding scales Scratching out prescriptions They said you can't help somebody else Until you take care of yourself He never really fell for it But he was quite convinced A man needs a vocation