Right Turns on Wrong Roads

Heard there's twelve years missing in Joshua Tree
Its a silent story, slow unfolding  
Like the slow grind of a boot  
Putting a cigarette out  
  
A metallic blur topping a rise  
In the distance as heat shimmers  
Nearby tumbleweeds roll    
Just heat and wind  
   
I've been west  
Been east  
North and south too  
Past is just been  
   
Then some days is black  
Sky roiling, rolling in  
Scent of rain 'fore it falls  
Pounding in sheets  
   
Seen storms and floods  
That wrath of God stuff  
And long golden days    
Where time didn't matter  
   
I've held hands with the living  
And the dying  
Wandered life like a vagabond wind  
Some days came up short, dead calm  
   
I've raged and I've fought  
Managed to get locked up  
Cheated death a time or two  
But he ain't through  
   
Life seems tied in some crazy knot  
I can't unwind, unravel, or untie  
But I've tied the knot, loved and lost  
Then loved again with some hate mixed in  
   
There's times I raised hell    
But it never got hot enough  
And times I was stone cold alone  
With the bridges I burned  
   
I've hated - that made vengeance pale  
I've loved beyond reason or needin'  
Most times I've wandered
Lost between the whipping posts  
   
Today's tired  
Like watching a cig burn down the butt  
Cause nothing else matters  
Beer bottle weary  
   
Too much climbing and looking  
Always on the run, on the phone  
I'm plugged in and disconnected  
Everything matters but nothing is real  
   
I've been there when people died  
But less and less when they lived  
Looking for meaning in things  
That have no meaning to give  
   
Nature still speaks to me  
It calls on peripheries  
Like dreams that once moved me  
I no longer remember  
   
I've passed farms like ghost towns  
Held together by memories  
Falling down stuff that forgot to fall down  
The whistle of a midnight train  
   
Some days  
Some nights  
Some times  
Some something's gone missing