Micheline

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