I won't have money and I won't stop, no I'll keep on moving until I drop
for my face is god-like beauty... let loose on the land of the free
and with speed my spiritual duty... no one will ever know me
I'll stay alive as long as I drive, on the road, man, that's where I thrive
that's where I run from who I am, a beautiful blur ever on the lam
I'm hooked on speed and what I need is an epic land where the highways feed
my eyes and my ears... and a bottomless hunger for grinding gears,
my lies and my fears... there outing squares and scouting queers
rolling out its long and spreading its wide and giving me the room I need to hide
in the beat where I seek to reap what I sow in uprooted, fleet-footed frolic and flow...
with the wind, hear it blow... me from Mudville to Missoula
across the infinite ocean face of America, America
my country ‘tis on thee my race ‘gainst the li'l yankee-québéquois –
running from place to place to place, from ‘tit Jean-Louis le petit-bourgeois
with a golden man pretty as a goddamn painting popping off at the wheel
and a girl slash leech there faintly fainting or buzzed and copping a feel
and whoosh! wham! and wow! goes the road, a snaking river wonder to behold
a Mississippi move cutting a groove from Boise to Mobile
Oh the road where I was ranger Dan, a shiftless Joe, a Navy man
where I was a New York digger digging for who the hell I am
until I threw in the towel and just cut and ran... and ran... and ran...
from Lawrence to Loredo to Lala land, from Walla Walla to the Hoover Dam...
and rode... and drove... and about me I still don't know...
and let it show that I gave up looking a long long time ago
gave up looking to blow my cover and splash my real all over my other
gave up looking and road the road, the road where I could roll...
and roll... writing that roll rolling under the Underwood keys
spewing out mass quantities, line after line of assorted me's,
black teeth biting into that paper to etch the words of my icon-maker –
yeah I came to California with a typewriter on my knees
All the way running from Lowell, Mass, and oh baby, what a gas!
But that too had to pass when the bennies were gone and the booze went wrong
and laughing it off made the gallery queasy and Neal ran off to drive for Ken Kesey
and the road gets hard when the words don't come, come so goddamn easy...
And I vote Republican and talk up the road to another television sleazy
awatching my face get bigger and bloated awondering whither my beauty floated –
my beauty behind me like so much dust on a Sonora side road in the dusk
rolling away from a pit stop riven, riven with want and lust –
LUST for the road and LUST for sensation, LUST wolfing down every mile in the nation
that's the pill and that's the elation, that's the motion intoxication
that comes from fuel in the machine, man we fly so high we have to scream,
we roll and roll till we take flight into the star-spangled bang up black and blue... night
The road sucking us dry, the reds sucking us white...
till we're there and gone like quicksilver, God... long gone outta sight.
