Black Lung

Basically, we are all alone

At the center of a pickaxe mine

Black lung stings as the pickaxe swings

And the void of the mine closes in

The Devil came and the angels sang

The song of the Holy Ghost

Tempted the soul from the pennies to the gold

Like the dust I spit from my mouth

Remember the night with the bar room fight

Where I killed all of my best friends

We gambled it away with the whiskey open keg

And we never saw it again

Well, I had a wife that I met back in high school

And her name was Lyla Jean

We saved away to escape some place

On the local miner's minor pay

We saved so long, the fall came and gone

At least twenty-seven times

It fell through the floorboards into deep dark darkness

We never saw it again

So West Virginia's home, and that's where we're stayin'

To the blade of a Bible hymn

Jesus says we're wicked, so we just keep on pickin'

At the scab of the open mine