Mama’s been a little hard to reach

 

She took the babies up to Myrtle Beach

 

Wants to study something I can teach

 

And I never was much for learning

 

Packed ‘em up in an old white van

 

Manufactured in Vietnam

 

I’m flicking ashes in a old beer can

 

And they tell me that Detroit’s still burning

 

Mama got a taste of something sweet

 

Where the water and the white sands meet

 

Posting pictures of her pretty little feet

 

For the whole round world to see

 

It’s been three days since I changed my clothes

 

Staring out the window at three black crows

 

Picking in the gravel where nothing grows

 

And thinking ‘bout her pretty little toes

 

All I can see mirrored in the TV

 

Is an image of me in a picture that we

 

Hung on the wall of the first day we met
 

A shared cigarette

 

How soon we forget

 

How it used to be

 

Mama got herself a brand new dress

 

It doesn’t matter but I must confess

 

I wonder who she’s trying to impress

 

Looking like the belle of the ball

 

Sissy’s in a picture grinning ear to ear

 

Baby brother got a souvenir

 

And mama’s learning magic, she can disappear

 

Like she never was there at all

 

All that I’ve known and have claimed as my own

 

Is battered and blown, see it sink like a stone

 

Under the waves of that wild eastern sea

 

That’s where she left me

 

And those memories

 

Of how it used to be

 

Mama sent a letter ‘cross the great divide

 

Hand delivered and certified

 

Take it with the catalogs back inside

 

And tack it on the bedroom wall

​

Strip back down to my underwear

 

Sitting in the kitchen in a cane back chair

 

Telephone ringing but I ain’t there

​

 

That call ain’t never gonna go through

 

Nobody here to answer you

 

See I got a little magic too

 

It’s like I never was here at all