Letters From Alcatraz

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Letters From Alcatraz ©2018 Robert George BMI

I took a trolley to that lawyer’s office near the docks
And he read me the will and handed me a cardboard box
Since she moved up to that beach shack on Bodega Bay
I had only heard from her on Mother’s Day

As a parting gift, sometimes all a person has
Are letters from Alcatraz

Some say Tom seduced her, others claimed it was rape
Then he wrote her once a week until his bold escape
People said his love for her was like a magic key
And her teardrops stained his letters while she breastfed me

As a source of strength, sometimes all a person has
Are letters from Alcatraz

Fam’ly legends say he first met her at a sock hop,
He’d bought that leather Brando jacket at a hock shop
She was a shy sixteen…he was wild and twenty-one
She was six weeks pregnant and their romance was in peril,
He stabbed her step-dad with a broken jug of Old Fitzgerald
He got murder one and they say that I’m his son

As a source of truth, sometimes all a person has
Are letters from Alcatraz

Human rats infested ev’ry square foot of that cell block,
Though that baby killer’s lawyer claimed that he was shell-shocked
When he got four life terms he just laughed
Tom’s first cell mate had once been a spy for Mossad
He taught Tom to scheme beneath a quiet façade
And one night Tom just vanished on a raincoat raft

Maybe we’re all lost and sometimes all a person has
Are letters from Alcatraz

Well, the fog was heavy and the sea was cold and dark
They said he was swallowed by the chop or eaten by a shark
Mom’d sit there playin’ “Love Hurts” on a suitcase phonograph
Drifting off on Old Fitzgerald like a raincoat raft

Maybe we’re all drowning and sometimes all a person has
Are letters from Alcatraz

On the day I turned eighteen she smiled and raised a toast
Then she moved up to that beach shack on the coast
No one in our fam’ly ever saw her much
I thought about her often though she rarely kept in touch

Fam’lies are a mystery and sometimes all a person has
Are letters from Alcatraz

Well, I packed her phonograph and hit a liquor store
Drove up to that fishing shack along the northern shore
Found an old man there whose eyes were full of ghosts
We played “Love Hurts”, poured some Old Fitz and then drank a toast

When the past is a puzzle, sometimes all a person has
Are letters from Alcatraz

Mom’d killed her step-dad when he seeded her with shame
Tom’d loved my mom and so he gladly took the blame
The man who gave me life surely did deserve to die
And in behalf of truth Tom’d had the nerve to lie

And to make sense of blood, sometimes all a person has
Are letters from Alcatraz