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