The Blues and Old Age

So, yeah. I worked for two years in a sandpaper factory, you could work there with a record, even my record was ok, but not in the office.

The office girls, just one or two, used to come to me, they found that there was a way to get really really good cocaine from places I passed by now and then, if they left a 'note', I would too, in 1977 it was just coming out, coke....no more good speed.....and I was hooked up like a motherfucker...no deals, no fronts...power..I liked the way they smelled...the only things in there that didn't stink.. they wouldn't even talk to me in the parking lot...good girls in nice clothes, easy and distant...

My foreman told me I was bad bad bad, so fuck yeah I was, bad as I could get away with like always.

Maybe someone besides me then knew that a simple thing like a musical statement from someone else's soul that had enough of it to let some show through moves me to tears sometimes, Cisco knows that, when I listen and I always hear music thank you I hid emotion, never angry, always ready for anything because I knew what they were after, my face was not for touching. make a fist and I will eat you, first. 

Always always, first. I am left-handed, you will not see the first one I throw, I promise, and it will, if I do it, will break through you, not my strength, my fear and fury at it, that shit that only thing I have that worries me, my temper.

I am unbelievably lucky to be free and alive.

I'M A FUCKING CHAMELEON IN A MISSLE SUIT 

WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR 

LET ME GO

those were my goodbye days, they are way out in that bad old miserable time of my life, alone, drunk, lost, wanted

down to a room in a wino flop in Rockland, from the top to the bottom without ever even seeing the top, that was for later,

no one gave much of a fuck when I left and neither did I

nothing was left, maybe a barstool and begging, eat the gun

I went away to the world of my salvation, many others also got some of that there

I went but I went with me but I knew a lot more, I was seasoned, I been to the wall so many times by then I only feared staying there anymore, it was the place that ate my family of lost Irish Drinkers and a great place for the others, which I never felt like I was one of, I knew I wasn't so I was free to leave

Shit. 

Good morning Tim, what the fuck is up with you this morning?

I thought, expected to, land on my own pile of blow and money but it hasn't happened yet.

It won't now, either, it turns out cocaine empires ain't any good anyway

I took my last check and bought me a 30 day go anywhere pass on a Trailways bus in Boston, got thrown off for using in the bathroom and fighting in New Jersey, then....

Pulled up three days later at my sisters house in Saint Louis

Gone for good

first time in my life I thought that drugs might be a problem for me, I was only 24 so I wasn't sure 

I still ain't sure..