Today, April 24, is my brother’s birthday. Charles John Wagner, founding member of The Little Wretches. Violinist. Singer. Painter. Sculptor. Poet.
TIGER PAJAMAS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zgSijrXvUs
He was just a child in tiger pajamas,
Complete with a tiger’s tail,
Hiding in the closet when his dad came home from work.
Grrrrr. Grrrrr.
Uh-oh, I think I hear a tiger.
Uh-oh, There’s a tiger in there.
Oh, no! Someone save me from that tiger!
Don’t worry, dad. It’s just me, your little boy.
Never was a child so in need of being loved.
But how much love is enough?
Oh, God, why’d you do that to my brother?
God, why’d you do that to him?
Oh, God, why’d you to that to my brother?
I thought you said you loved him?
I thought you loved him?
I thought you said you did?
When he was nine-years old
And his birthday came,
Even mother and father forgot.
We ran out to the store to buy a baseball glove
As though the fairy-boy would start to like sports.
Some cake and some ice-cream.
The kid never knew.
Then again, he had to have known.
He was the spoiled kid,
But the forgotten kid,
The kid who grew up on his own.
He was the kid with chipped teeth
and a couple of scars,
Always crashing into something,
Always going too hard.
The queer one, the bitchy one,
The girly-boy child.
But how you gonna hate someone so reckless and wild?
He liked to smoke.
And he liked to get high.
And he liked to drink.
My, could that kid drink.
He used to drink even the biker-dudes under the table
in those soggy, druggy, smelly redneck bars.
People used to say he showed them his poetry.
People used to say he played them his songs.
Well, I know he could sing.
But he never showed nothing to me.
Too precious, too private, too strong.
That’s the problem with faeries,
Always hiding themselves.
Afraid you might find out the truth.
He was my brother.
His enemies were my enemies.
But we pretended that nobody knew.
Never was a child so in need of being loved.
But how much love is enough?
Oh, God, why’d you do that to my brother?
God, why’d you do that to him?
Oh, God, why’d you to that to my brother?
I thought you said you loved him?
I thought you loved him?
I thought you said you did?
Oh, God, why’d you do that to my brother?
His enemies are my enemies.
So how am I supposed to avenge what You did to my brother?