|
Micheline used to come to our house and knock on our door |
|
My dad would answer and say |
|
"What do you want, girl?" |
|
And she'd say, "Can I take a bath with Mark?" |
|
My dad would say, "My son ain't here" |
|
Send her home and shut the door and we'd all laugh |
|
And Micheline would walk down the street glowing and smiling |
|
Like she just got Paul McCartney's autograph |
|
Her brain worked a little slower than the others |
|
She wore thick-rimmed glasses. |
|
She took a different bus to school than the other kids |
|
And was in different kind of classes |
|
When she got older a neighborhood thug moved in with her |
|
And started taking her welfare payments |
|
He took her down to the bank |
|
Helped her withdraw her savings that was put away for her |
|
And he went off with it |
|
The cops caught up with him, he did a little time |
|
And cut to many years later |
|
He's doing life in a Florida penitentiary with his father |
|
Both of them for murder |
|
Micheline, Micheline, Micheline |
|
Micheline, Micheline, Micheline |
|
Micheline, she wanted love like anyone else |
|
Micheline, Micheline, Micheline |
|
She had dreams like anyone else |
|
My friend Brett, my friend Brett, my friend Brett |
|
My friend Brett, he liked to play the guitar |
|
But he had an awkward way of playing barre chords |
|
With two fingers spreading his index and middle fingers really far apart |
|
One day in band practice he dropped like a deer was shot |
|
And was flipping around like a fish |
|
He had an aneurysm triggered by a nerve in his hand |
|
From the strain he was putting on it |
|
I went to see him in Ohio |
|
He had a horseshoe shaped scar on his scalp and he talked real slow |
|
We played pool like we did in our teens |
|
And his head was shaved and he still wore bell-bottomed jeans |
|
In '99 I was on tour in Sweden when I called home |
|
To tell my mom I got a part in a movie |
|
When she said, "Mark, there's something that you need to know" |
|
"Brett died the other day, you really should send a letter to his mom and dad" |
|
And I got on my train in Malmo and looked out at the snow |
|
Feeling somewhere between happy and sad |
|
My friend Brett, my friend Brett, my friend Brett |
|
My friend Brett, my friend Brett, my friend Brett |
|
My friend Brett, he had a wife and a son |
|
My friend Brett, my friend Brett, my friend Brett |
|
He just liked to play guitar and he never hurt anyone |
|
My grandma, my grandma, my grandma |
|
My grandma, my grandma, my grandma |
|
Before she passed away we'd go and visit her at my aunt's house when I was small |
|
I couldn't bear the shape she was in |
|
So at the top of the driveway I'd sit in the car |
|
One day I was just fucking around |
|
When I put it in reverse and I was free-falling |
|
I remember the car moving backwards |
|
My heart was beating and I blacked out |
|
Another car was coming down the street and I totalled them both |
|
And I got knocked out |
|
My grandma, my grandma, my grandma |
|
My grandma, my grandma, my grandma |
|
First time I met her, she lived in L.A. |
|
I think it was Huntington Park |
|
I made friends with a kid named Marceau |
|
And another kid named Cyrus Hunt |
|
We'd go downtown and get ice cream and feed french fries to the pigeons |
|
And talk to the handicapped vets from Vietnam |
|
It was the first time I saw a hummingbird, or a palm tree, or a lizard |
|
Or saw an ocean, or heard David Bowie's "Young Americans" |
|
And I saw the movie "Benji" in the theatre |
|
My grandma, my grandma, my grandma |
|
My grandma, my grandma, my grandma |
|
My grandma, I heard she had a pretty hard life |
|
But after her first husband passed away she met a man from California |
|
And he treated her really nice |
|
My grandma, my grandma, my grandma, my grandma |
|
My grandma, my grandma, my grandma |
|
My grandma was diagnosed at 62 |
|
Her kids stepped up to the plate for her |
|
And were there the whole way through |
