Belt parkway song and turnpike blues
Expressway nerves and parking-deck shoes
Radio silence, no news is just no news
What's more to lose, it's a driver’s life
Dropped one off at LGA
Deadhead down to JFK
One more pickup and I’m done for today
Such is the way of a driver's life
Well maybe I'll find a new career
I don't want to be here for another year
I look in my mirror to the rear
And see that the way that I steered
May have been the wrong road
The Kew Gardens interchange is so slick in the rain
To navigate this spaghetti is always such a pain
But I know where to go and I stay in my lane
What's there to explain, it's a driver's life
Baby looks up to me with pleading eyes from the dash
When will I see you again, her pleading eyes seem to ask
I'll be there soon, baby, I promise I'll make it fast
Soon as I cash out of this driver's life
Well maybe I'll make my way back out west
Long as I'm still here I can't get any rest
It’s too easy to stay depressed
Once you see that your crest
Has fallen by the side of the road
Ah, shit, says the officer who's first on the scene
Observing the crushed driver in the crumpled machine
Hardly the worst that I've ever seen
Just another poor sap in a limousine, it's a driver's life
What's that he’s holding? asks the EMT
A picture of his little girl, looks like to me
He probably hit something he never did see
Damn pity, such an end to a driver's life
Waitasecond, says the officer to the crew at his feet
His finger's moving, his heart still has a beat
Put him in the ambulance, take him off the street
Don't pull up that sheet ...
... it's a driver's life.
©2023 The Hesh Inc.
This is the title song to my "Waitsian heartbreak opus," completed just last Friday, February 24, 2023. It has been over a decade in the making. The projected album, A Driver's Life, depicts my "season in hell," my time spent underemployed as a limousine driver in the New Jersey/New York area after relocating from the West Coast in the aftermath of my divorce. My prospective employment in the publishing field, which I had gambled on by moving back east, had fallen through and I was scrambling to make ends meet, and after a year of it, barely scraping by and missing my beloved daughter terribly, I was seriously considering going back to Los Angeles. After all, if I'm already going to be underemployed, I may as well be close to my friends and family there, right? Fortunately, I didn't experience the harrowing events of the last three verses, but I made use of some artistic license to tell a story. Tom Waits was clearly an influence here and I hope I did him some honor with this song.