Look over yonder, tell me what
do you see?
10,000 people looking after me
I may be famous, or I may be
no one
But in the end all the races I’ve
run
Don’t make my race run in vain
Seem like there’s no tomorrow
Seem like all my yesterdays
were filled with pain
There’s nothing but darkness
tomorrow
If you gonna do like you say you
do
If you gonna change your mind
and walk away
It don’t seem to matter much
anymore
Don’t even ask me the time of
day
‘Cause I don’t know
Don’t make me live in this
pain no longer
You know I’m gettin’ weaker,
not stronger
My poor heart can’t stand
much more
So why don’t you just start
talkin’
If you’re gonna walk out that
door, start walkin’
I’ll get by somehow
Maybe not tomorrow, but
somehow
I know someday I will find
someone
Who can ease my pain, like
you once done
Yes I know, we had a good
thing going
Seem like a long time
Seem like a long time
Like a long time
Like a long time
– Ron McKernan, January 1973
Pigpen with his MIT sweatshirt, he studied technology of the blues.
He Was a Friend of Mine
weird how it goes
with beginnings
& endings
again
this year
winter’s over
end of the loco months
new green
appearing everywhere
sweet lunacy
birds & blue skies
eternal snows
glutting the rivers
brown with earth
whales starting north
with precious
young
& pigpen died
my eyes
tequila-tortured
4 days mourning
lost another fragment
of my own self
knowing
the same brutal
night-sweats & hungers
he knew
the same cold fist
that knocked him down
now clutching furiously
at my gut
shut my eyes
& see him standing
spread-legged
on the stage of the world
the boys prodding him
egging him on
he telling all he ever knew
or cared to know
mike hand cocked like
a boxer’s
head throwed back
stale whiskey blues
many-peopled desolations
neon rainy streets
& wilderness of airports
thousands maybe millions
loved him
were fired instantly
into forty-five minutes of
midnight hour
but when he died
he was thin, sick, scared
alone
like i said to laird
i just hope he didn’t hurt
too much
weird
all these endings
& beginnings
pale voices of winter
faces, rivers, birds, songs
lunacies
i wonder
how many seasons
new green coming once more
to the land
fresh winds turn
bending the long grasses
we’ll hear him sing
again
– Robert M. Petersen
Bobby Peterson, one of the GD lyricists, wrote this upon hearing of Pigpen’s passing.
Photo: Bob Seidemann
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