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 bar 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.