Bruce Springsteen - Black Cowboys lyrics

Rainey William's playground was the
Mott Haven streets where he ran past melted
Candles and flower wreaths
Names and photos of the young black faces
Whose death and blood
Consecrated these places

Rainey's mother said, "Rainey
Stay at my side
For you are my blessing, you are my pride
It's your love here that keeps my soul alive
I want you to come home
From school and stay inside"

Rainey'd do his work and put his books away
There was a channel showed a
Western movie every day
Lynette brought him home books on the
Black cowboys of the Oklahoma range
The Seminole scouts that fought the
Tribes of the Great Plains

Summer come and the days grew long
Rainey always had his mother's
Smile to depend on
Along the street of stray bullets
He made his way to the warmth of her arms at
The end of each day

Come the fall, the rain flooded these homes
Here in Ezekiel's valley of dry bones
It fell hard and dark to the ground
It fell without a sound

Lynette took up with a man
Whose business was the boulevard
Whose smile was fixed in a face
That was never off guard
In the pipes 'neath the kitchen sink
His secrets are kept
In the day, behind drawn
Curtains in Lynette's bedroom, he slept

Then she got lost in the days
The smile Rainey depended on dusted away
The arms that held him were no more his home
He lay at night his head pressed to her
Chest listening to the ghost in her bones

In the kitchen
Rainey slipped his hand between the pipes
From a brown bag pulled
Five hundred dollar bills
And stuck it in his coat side
Stood in the dark at his mother's bed
Brushed her hair and kissed her eyes

In the twilight
Rainey walked to the station
Along streets of stone
Through Pennsylvania and Ohio
His train drifted on
Through the small towns of Indiana
The big train crept
As he lay his head back on the seat and slept

He woke and the towns gave way
To muddy fields of green
Corn and cotton and endless
Nothing in between
Over the rutted hills of Oklahoma
The red sun slipped and was gone
The moon rose and stripped the
Earth to it's bone