South of the South

I was just a tender chicken
In the Florida rotisserie
My own sweat's basting me
Thunderstorms are chasing me
I bit into a lighting bolt
My own tongue began to smoke
I woke up with an empty mouth
Watched the watch tick backwards
South of the south

The CSX vibrates the tracks
Mighty roaring shakes the shacks
Purple skies and orange moons
Plants are confident in June
The humidity - it's thick, you can cut it with a knife
If you'd like to take a breath here, honey
I'm going to cut you out a slice

So I developed gills and I moved into the aquifer
Fell asleep in Wakulla Springs
Woke up down in Jupiter
Then I moved back to the land
High into an orange tree
Was set for life with citrus
But my body couldn't take this . . .
Acidity

So I strolled down to Miami
Tried to find myself some friends
Found myself in South Beach
And I met some mannequins
Who smelled of coconuts and Coppertone
Like those smells real well
But as far as conversations go
I guess that it stopped at the start
Of the smell

It was Elvis and Sinatra
Now where's your wallet, man, I got you
But now if you're poor like me
They let poor people like me be
They say that North Beach is a war zone
High rise hotels hollowed out
But now we were living large
We were stepping out
Into a thirty dollar beachfront motel
Down south of the south

South of the south
Down in north Miami
South of the south
Me and my old lover Terry
South of the south
We were practically married

So I jumped my pogo stick
All the way to Ybor City
Where they burned up a couple blocks
And to me seemed like a pity
That was once a Cuban district
And a center for the arts
Was now a mall-like atmosphere
Homogeneous and insincere
They burned its heart right out
Down south of the south

So I became the snake bird
An old swamp turkey
And some redneck tried to shoot me
Tried to make swamp turkey jerky
But I evaded all his bullets
And I flew into the Gulf
And I jumped upon a west wind out to a safer heaven
Out near Alcaniz and Baylin
Down south
South of the south

In the town of Pensacola
Riding bikes like we were kids
Over cobble stones and brick
The fenced moonlit bridge
There's a sandlot shotgun shack
To move all rusted out
And there's a couch on every front porch
Flapping screen doors
Ants on the apple cores
Hawk's boiled peanuts and more
Down south
South of the south

South of the south
South of Opelika
South of the south
South of Tuscaloosa
South of the south
Old Alpharetta
South of the south
South Carolina
South of the south
Down south of the south