Bummer

His mama was a midnight woman
 His daddy was a drifter drummer
 One night they put it together
 Nine months later came the little black bummer
 He was a laid back lump in the cradle
 Chewing the paint chips that fell from the ceiling
 Whenever he cried he got a fist in his face
 So he learned not to show his feelings
 He was a pig-tail puller in grammer school
 Left back twice by the seventh grade
 Sniffing glue in Junior High
 And the first one in school to get laid
 He was a weed-speed pusher at fifteen
 He was mainlining skag a year later
 He'd started pimping when they put him away
 In jail he changed from a junkie to a hater
 And just like the man from the precinct said:
 "Put him away, you better kill him instead.
 A bummer like that is better of dead
 Someday they're gonna have to put a bullet in his head."
 They threw him back on the street, he robbed an A & P
 He didn't blink at the buddy that he shafted
 And just about the time they would have caught him too
 He had the damn good fortune to get drafted
 He was A-One bait for Vietnam, you see they needed more bodies in a hurry
 He was a cinch to train cause all they had to do
 Was to figure how to funnel his fury
 They put him in a tank near the D M Z
 To catch the gooks slipping over the border
 They said his mission was to Search and Destroy
 And for once he followed and order
 One sweat-soaked day in the Yung-Po Valley
 With the ground still steaming from the rain
 There was a bloody little battle that didn't mean nothing
 Except to the few that remained
 You see a couple hundred slants had trapped the other five tanks
 And had started to pick off the crews
 When he came on the scene and it really did seem
 This is why he'd paid those dues
 It was something like a butcher going berserk
 Or a sane man acting like a fool
 Or the bravest thing that a man had ever done
 Or a madman blowing his cool
 Well he came on through like a knife through butter
 Or a scythe sweeping through the grass
 Or to say it like the man would have said it himself:
 "Just a big black bastard kicking ass!"
 And just like the man from the precinct said:
 "Put him away, you better kill him instead.
 A bummer like that is better of dead
 Someday they're gonna have to put a bullet in his head."
 When it was over and the smoke had cleared
 There were a lot of V C bodies in the mud
 And when the rescued men came over for the very first time
 They found him smiling as he lay in his blood
 They picked up the pieces and they stitched him back together
 He pulled through though they thought he was a goner
 And it force them to give him what they said they would
 Six purple hearts and the Medal of Honor
 Of course he slouched as the chief white honkey said:
 "Service beyond the call of duty"
 But the first soft thought was passing through his mind
 "My medal is a Mother of a beauty!"
 He got a couple of jobs with the ribbon on his chest
 And though he tried he really couldn't do 'em
 There was only a couple of things that he was really trained for
 And he found himself drifting back to 'em
 Just about the time he was ready to break
 The V A stopped sending him his checks
 Just a matter of time 'cause there was no doubt
 About what he was going to do next
 It ended up one night in a grocery store
 Gun in hand and nine cops at the door
 And when his last battle was over
 He lay crumpled and broken on the floor
 And just like the man from the precinct said:
 "Put him away, you better kill him instead.
 A bummer like that is better of dead
 Someday they're gonna have to put a bullet in his head."
 Well he'd breathed his last, but ten minutes past
 Before they dared to enter the place
 And when they flipped his riddled body over they found
 His second smile frozen on his face
 They found his gun where he'd thrown it
 There was something else clenched in his fist
 And when they pried his fingers open they found the Medal of Honor
 And the Sergeant said: "Where in the hell he get this?"
 There was a stew about burying him in Arlington
 So they shipped him in box to Fayette
 And they kind of stashed him in a grave in the county plot
 The kind we remember to forget
 And just like the man from the precinct said:
 "Put him away, you better kill him instead.
 A bummer like that is better of dead
 Someday they're gonna have to put a bullet in his head."