Robert A. Wagner +/- The Little Wretches: Music

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I got cancer when I was 19. I wanted to write something that captured who and what I'd known and cared about in the event that I didn't survive. Inspired by Patti Smith's HORSES and her adaptations of Gloria and Land of a Thousand Dances, I took my favorite song, The Velvet Underground's I'LL BE YOUR MIRROR, and inserted some poetry.

I'll be your mirror, reflect what you are, in case you don't know.
I'll be the wind, the rain and the sunset, a light on your door, to show that you're home.

I'll be the bark of a dog at seven a.m. as you return home from the night shift.
I'll be a spinster who's been on barbiturates since 1950.
I'll be a seventy-two year old woman who goes to mass every morning.
I'll be saying to everyone who asks, "Hey, buddy, spare a quarter?"
"No, man, spare a dime?" while paging through the help-wanted section
of the Pittsburgh Press at a newstand on Smithfield Street.

I'll be your mirror, reflect what you are, in case you don't know.

I'll be a bent cola can rattling down the street.
I'll be minimum wage and unpaid dinner to dishwashers who still can't get the crust off
the pots and pans no matter how hard they scrub
I'll be certain unemployment hovering over the sweating head that screams in disgust
in an airless breathless freight truck in August
I'll be the daily quota of beer that pacifies the United Parcel Service
I'll be the broken window of the stolen Ford stripped and abandoned in the parking lot.
I'll be walking home.

I'll be your mirror, reflect what you are, in case you don't know.

I'll be rollers belts and rails that transport slammed packages marked FRAGILE that rattle all the way from Oakland, California.
I'll be drunk over the toilet in the women's room on the thirteenth floor of a college
dormitory.
I'll be spitting off bridges till the day I die.
I'll be a never ending collection of defective messiahs.
I'll be the man who stashes empty beer cases in his neighbor's trash because he's ashamed of what the garbage man might think.
I'll be the fly in the funeral parlor, spilled milk in an infant's crib, and misspelled graffiti on the playground shelter wall.

I'll be the wind, the rain and the sunset, a light on your door, to show that you're home.
When you think the night has seen your mind,
that inside you're twisted and unkind,
let me stand to show that you are blind.
Please put down your hands.
'Cause I see you.


I find it hard to believe that you don't know the beauty you are.
I find it hard to believe that you don't know the beauty you are.
I find it hard to believe that you don't know the beauty

You are three-hundred couples of best friends in the City Park, kicking debris in the river
on the first sunny day of Spring.
You are a baby eaten alive by a starving dog while mother's locked in the hallway banging
on the door, You are all the news that's fit to print.
You are what I am, and I am what I've been through, and I've been through hell.
You are the muddy path behind the school where truants smoke tobacco
and make suicide pacts.
You are blood-stained sheets and pillowcases when high school girls
slit their rists and regret it.
You are three bottle of half-digested sleeping pills puked onto the bathroom floor.
You are ninety days of observation on the wards of St. Francis, six weeks of recovery in
the lock up at St. Johns, fourty-two days of withdrawal and contrition in the dorms
of Greenbriar.
Now you're doubling-out, three to eleven, eleven to seven, three times a week
for minimum wage.

I find it hard to believe that you don't know the beauty you are.

You are a broken record of nine-to-five that repeats six days a week, fifty weeks a year for too long now.
You are three months in America, can't speak English, and already lost your tailoring business in Ambridge.
You are sewing ripped underarms in a dry cleaning store for extra money.
You are long lines waiting for an application to J&L Steel.
You are capitalism, may God strike you dead if you're not democratic.
You are in love, Charlie Brown.

You are a shivering stumble bum huddled beneath a pile of rags on a warehouse dock.
You are an empty soap-dispenser and soggy paper towels in the bus station lavatory.
You are a truant junky's blood on the Burger King Wall three blocks
from Westinghouse High School.

Let me be your car radio playing AM pop as you sit in the rush hour traffic.
Let me be the burns on your harms from creasing pants in a cage of hot steam pipes.
Let me be your car's muffler dragging on the ground.
Let me be the splinters in your hands from climbing a wooden fence in a neighborhood
playground on a drunk Spring night.
Let me be alone, you're a pain in my ass, sometimes.

Let me be the soup cans and brushes on the dead artist's grave on the hill across from
the slag dumps.
Let me be the unspoken words of friendship between a man and a woman who will never
become lovers.
Let me be the imprints on your face when you wake up on the floor in front of the t.v.
with your jacket as a pillow.
Let me be the blood on the carpet where mom stabbed dad because he beat her once
too often. Let me be your friend.
Let me be your friend.

Let me be your eyes, a hand to your darkness, so you won't be afraid.
When you think the night has seen your mind,
that inside you're twisted and unkind,
let me stand to show that you are blind.
Please put down your hands.
'Cause I see you.

I'll be your mirror.
I'll be your mirror.
'Cause I find it hard to believe you don't know the beauty you are.