DEAD LONG AGO

 

 

All those people? Dead long ago. Most of `em anyway

They ate up all the lead, used so many drugs

Their bodies shot to s**t, they’re all dead

Some’s left, see em once in a while 

walking down the street,

Standing in the rain, trapped

Stuck on their methadone, loving it, not moving on

 

Heroin was good in the 60’s, plentiful and cheap, 

My friends and acquaintances died from o.d.’s

Me? I never used it. Uhh ... O.K., I tried it once,

You know what they say about birds flock together

I flocked, beats me what for, but I did, 

Truth is that flock was better n’ home

What? You want to know if I had a good home? 

 

I thought that flock was better n’ home, 

14 years old hanging with the addicts.

So sorry, at 14 it was alchies. Alcoholics.  

Yeah, tried that too, didn’t like it none

Having babies for a black man, angry alcoholic

He became a junkie. I saw him not long ago

 

Asked him when I saw him, 

“Why were you so mean?”

“Don’t know,” he said to me, 

“Couldn’t hep myself, I guess.”

He tells me, “I’m HIV now, got a hernia so bad 

my balls swoll up down to the floor.”

He was a god-damned strong man at 20.  

I saw him press 250 pounds. Handsome too 

6 feet tall, 180 pounds, muscular, well built

He had lots of girls. Gave me gonorrhea 30 years ago.

30 years ago I told him about our baby

“Shoe box size,” he said when 

I held my hands up to describe

“Coffee color with lots of cream,” 

I said about the baby’s skin.

Dead 30 years ago.

 

In the middle of the night they came, 2 a.m. or so,

Said “Your baby’s gone, you can see him now you want.”

Gone, born 2 days and a half ago,

“You can see him now you want,” 

the doctor’s hand resting on my shoulder

 

I birthed him glimpsing his coffee 

colored skin with lots of cream,

They took him away, 

never `lowed again another see

“His lungs were half formed,” they said, 

“You can see him now you want.”

 

Begging for 2 days and a half, not allowed.  

“You can see him now you want.”

“What for?” I said, “I wanted him alive.”

“Too bad. So sorry. You can see him now you want.  

At least let us do an autopsy. 

Save some other woman pain like you.”

 

So Sorry. Trapped in a time warp.  

Childhood? What Childhood? Childhood what?

So sorry. Never, ever heard the word.  

Can’t imagine what it means.  

Reviews

[Lightning Paw]

Raw, rhapsodic and even beautiful in its painful honesty. This is precisely the kind of thing you do best Joy. Brilliant.