The baseheads call me Daddy Luzz like I'm fly.
I was my momma's first, a cream-faced baby boy.
Pops thought I was ace, raised me like a king,
named me for the light of the Las Vegas sun.
Or maybe pale Lucifer. No one would know
to see me now: sun burnt my skin as dark as Coke.
In college, I gene-spliced corn to make cocaine.
With a chemistry book in my hand, I could fly.
I wish I'd made Christian use of what I know,
but like Momma said, "Folly, thy name be Boy."
She hoped I'd be a NASA man blazing past the sun,
but my Supernaut Jiffypop made me campus king.
It's a crackbrain thing to think you're king;
I tossed around cash from frankenstein coke
and party girls loved me like God's risen son.
But I was just a buzzing mosquito, a robber fly
sucking profit from the uptown mobster boys
who lectured me with fists and guns. I knew
to blow to cowtowns where I wasn't known.
Spit-quick, I found hilljack saviors: Mr. King
and Passie Fay made me their moonshine boy,
kept me copsafe while I cropped up their coke.
For a while, life was stingless as a butterfly.
I took a woman, built my manor in the sun.
My wife stroked out giving birth to our son.
When I held bawling Russ, in my gut I knew
it was time to get real, get straight, time to fly.
That wasn't The Man's pharming plan. Ol' King
flared hot as a blast furnace combusting coke
when I asked if I could stop. He said, "Boy,
I'll throw you to the narcs; they'll bury your boy
in the county home while you bust rocks in the sun."
So. I've plotted our route while I plow out the coke.
I found a broken-down turboprop in a barn. I know
more than chemistry and genes: engineering's king.
With parts and practice, my boy and I can fly.
I've got to keep my son safe; I've got to quit this coke.
Russ thinks he'll be Sky King; boy's gotta watch the sun,
fly for the sea, get free of this mazed-up life I've known.