I was an accident waiting to happen. Who knew…It was only 1960.
Nobody on tv looked like me, and if it was on tv…it must be the truth. Right?
So, I felt like I could never be happy…unless, I could change…my skin.
Nobody in the pictures on the walls and fans in grand mom’s church looked like me.
Damn, I don’t even belong in Heaven. Maybe that’s why I caught so much Hell.
Who could I grow up to be like…Jim Brown, James Brown? I couldn’t run fast or sing.
I was stuck like Chuck… Mary Ordinary…. Joe Banana (one of the bunch).
Just another too black, too poor, too ignorant, too ugly kid from the projects…
Why does it hurt so much? If only I could change…
In 1968 I found a magic carpet. It took me up, up and away. Peace at last.
I was different. I was saved. I changed. I saw the light, felt the warmth.
Mother’s Love. Truth set me free. Uptown it only cost $3.00 a bag, $10.00 in Jersey.
Skag, stuff, duji…heroin gave me wings. In one giant leap I became a man.
I left all the other 13 year-olds light years behind.
I stuck out my arm and said, “me too.” I became a warrior, a revolutionary, a poet, a junkie…Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, I’m free at last…
I showed them. No one could expect anything of me now. A junkie is free.
The only responsibility is to self, and a teen-age junkie can really get lost in the sauce.
Lost in the haze of puberty. Lost in the fog of manhood. Lost in the darkness of self-hate.
Time is measured in bags and nods and scores and dead friends and family-turned-marks.
And state time and county time and sickness and scores and sickness and sickness.
Days turned into weeks turned into months turned into years.
Heroin became my wife, cocaine my mistress. Lies my profession. Crime my career.
I felt nothing. No hate, love, guilt, pity, no shame, remorse, pain, confusion, nothing.
Any feeling that tried to creep into my consciousness went into the cooker. I shot them up too…I lived and died in the same sentence. Monosyllabic ramblings,
” who got it?”
“you got a set?’
“they got good dope uptown, 145th. PC boys”
At 33 I was already an old man. A veteran of the dope wars, a survivor, a dinosaur.
Sick and tried of being sick and tired. A lion with no teeth is at the mercy of the young lions. A washed-up, punch-drunk fighter. Accused, abused, lied to and lied on.
I can’t do it anymore. I am running out of time. Where did these babies come from?
I can’t do any more time. That last bid broke me. What’s left? AIDS, Hep-C? Life in the penitentiary? My hustle is gone, can’t kill nothing, nothing won’t die. A living lie.
Tired of living, afraid of dying. I can’t stop, but I gotta keep trying. God help me, cause man won’t. Mom’s hurt, dad’s pissed. They actually wanted me to do something with my life! Damn, I didn’t know that freedom wasn’t free. How could a slick joker like me get caught out there like this? But I can’t blame it on the dope cause I choose it, or did it choose me? Was it waiting for me all the time? Looking to free a self-imprisoned child of the night. Free him with the false promise of better days and bigger highs.
It’s called slavery. You see the chains remain (why do they call it The Game when you can never win?). Maybe if my spirit had not been broken before I was born, maybe if they had not killed Martin and Medgar and Emmett and Malcolm and Little Bobby. Maybe I could have overcome four hundred years…maybe.
I found out where real freedom came from. All this time I’ve been fighting to stay alive.
I surrender
I surrender
surrender,
surrender to live.
© 2004 swing first productions
Nobody on tv looked like me, and if it was on tv…it must be the truth. Right?
So, I felt like I could never be happy…unless, I could change…my skin.
Nobody in the pictures on the walls and fans in grand mom’s church looked like me.
Damn, I don’t even belong in Heaven. Maybe that’s why I caught so much Hell.
Who could I grow up to be like…Jim Brown, James Brown? I couldn’t run fast or sing.
I was stuck like Chuck… Mary Ordinary…. Joe Banana (one of the bunch).
Just another too black, too poor, too ignorant, too ugly kid from the projects…
Why does it hurt so much? If only I could change…
In 1968 I found a magic carpet. It took me up, up and away. Peace at last.
I was different. I was saved. I changed. I saw the light, felt the warmth.
Mother’s Love. Truth set me free. Uptown it only cost $3.00 a bag, $10.00 in Jersey.
Skag, stuff, duji…heroin gave me wings. In one giant leap I became a man.
I left all the other 13 year-olds light years behind.
I stuck out my arm and said, “me too.” I became a warrior, a revolutionary, a poet, a junkie…Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, I’m free at last…
I showed them. No one could expect anything of me now. A junkie is free.
The only responsibility is to self, and a teen-age junkie can really get lost in the sauce.
Lost in the haze of puberty. Lost in the fog of manhood. Lost in the darkness of self-hate.
Time is measured in bags and nods and scores and dead friends and family-turned-marks.
And state time and county time and sickness and scores and sickness and sickness.
Days turned into weeks turned into months turned into years.
Heroin became my wife, cocaine my mistress. Lies my profession. Crime my career.
I felt nothing. No hate, love, guilt, pity, no shame, remorse, pain, confusion, nothing.
Any feeling that tried to creep into my consciousness went into the cooker. I shot them up too…I lived and died in the same sentence. Monosyllabic ramblings,
” who got it?”
“you got a set?’
“they got good dope uptown, 145th. PC boys”
At 33 I was already an old man. A veteran of the dope wars, a survivor, a dinosaur.
Sick and tried of being sick and tired. A lion with no teeth is at the mercy of the young lions. A washed-up, punch-drunk fighter. Accused, abused, lied to and lied on.
I can’t do it anymore. I am running out of time. Where did these babies come from?
I can’t do any more time. That last bid broke me. What’s left? AIDS, Hep-C? Life in the penitentiary? My hustle is gone, can’t kill nothing, nothing won’t die. A living lie.
Tired of living, afraid of dying. I can’t stop, but I gotta keep trying. God help me, cause man won’t. Mom’s hurt, dad’s pissed. They actually wanted me to do something with my life! Damn, I didn’t know that freedom wasn’t free. How could a slick joker like me get caught out there like this? But I can’t blame it on the dope cause I choose it, or did it choose me? Was it waiting for me all the time? Looking to free a self-imprisoned child of the night. Free him with the false promise of better days and bigger highs.
It’s called slavery. You see the chains remain (why do they call it The Game when you can never win?). Maybe if my spirit had not been broken before I was born, maybe if they had not killed Martin and Medgar and Emmett and Malcolm and Little Bobby. Maybe I could have overcome four hundred years…maybe.
I found out where real freedom came from. All this time I’ve been fighting to stay alive.
I surrender
I surrender
surrender,
surrender to live.
© 2004 swing first productions
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