Other ljmontgo
Graffiti Saved (accompaniment - expand to see lyric)

This is the accompaniment for what I'm calling a rust belt requiem. Hopefully one day I'll find a decent singer to sing it. It was inspired by Phillip Meyer's excellent novel "American Rust." Here's the lyric I wrote for it:

The mill is closed… the jobs are gone
They blocked both ends… of the bridge ‘cross the Mon
The tracks that once… held coal and coke
Are now just weeds… and poison oak.

A few outbuildings… a few smokestacks
The rusted fences… not nearly intact
The furnaces now… are piles of bricks
The ground water… might make you sick

We never thought… it would look this way
But what isn’t rust… graffiti saved.

Some homeless live… in the gatehouse shack
It was made of concrete… built to last
A kinda tombstone… for the grounds
It had cost too much… to knock it down

A Penn Steel sign… near a pile of coal
Is riddled full… of bullet holes
There’s little else… to show the fall
The valley has… reclaimed it all

We never thought… it would look this way
But what isn’t rust… graffiti saved.