Strange Medicine

[good4somethingbum]

Strange Medicine ©2015 Robert George BMI

I got up at 7:30…shaved and made my sofa-bed
Spread some Jiffy on the last slice of a week old loaf o’ bread
Took a trolley to the VA in the heart of New Orleans
Since Iraq I’d had a low grade fever and infected spleen
But the piss-ant doctor said my problems were all in my head
And I oughtta go upstairs and see the army shrink instead

Well, that quack sure put me in an evil mood
And for all I’d sacrificed his attitude
Was strange medicine

In the hallway was an old nurse with a deer-skin ribbon in her hair
She slipped me a hand drawn map and said my cure was waiting there
So I took a fan-boat through a swampland full of hollow logs
I saw gators and constrictors big enough to swallow dogs
Then I found an old hag livin’ in a stilted bayou shack
And she had a row of dusty jars along an antler rack

Then she said her healing gifts were not a myth
And yet there were things that should not be taken with
Her strange medicine

Well, she gave me seven magic jars and sent me on my way
Just a teaspoon and my symptoms disappeared within a day
Two weeks later I picked mushrooms from around a willow tree
Made a big ole pot of gumbo from a fam’ly recipe
After dinner I shape-shifted and a monster then awoke
And he stalked the midnight sidewalks in a stove-pipe hat and cloak

There were taverns, alleyways and whores
When I woke up I could feel him waiting for
More strange medicine

Deep within my righteous spirit I had reached a dark divide
And I’d felt a secret pleasure crossing to the other side
So that night I mixed the potion and the mushrooms once again
And I roamed the Quarter as a monster far above all men
Then I saw the headline in the paper and my poor heart sank
Harlots had been washing up along the Mississippi’s banks

There were questions I could not deny
Had those sporting women all been strangled by
My strange medicine

Well, I dumped my old soup kettle
And I burned the mushrooms in a garbage can
And I slowly learned to settle
For the dull existence of an average man

Weeks went by and though more bodies washed up in the dead of night
I thought they were just the monster’s deeds now bathed in muddy light
One day I had lunch at Gramma’s and she fed me homemade quiche
Then at sundown I could feel a beast of hell was off its leash
I awoke next mornin’ with a mem’ry of a torrid dream
Haunted silhouettes along the river and a horrid scream

Morning papers said the case was closed
And somehow I knew the killer was exposed
By strange medicine

There were photos of the killer all across the news that day
It turned out to be my doctor at the New Orleans VA
Last night he’d attacked a prostitute along the riverside
And the myst’ry man who caught him had not been identified
Was it all coincidental or did fate extend its hand
Split my soul and send a dark avenger to defend its land

Though for now that monster’s buried deep
There are nights I long to wake him from his sleep
With strange medicine

[good4somethingbum]

...