MARVIN GAYE: SUGAR I like a troubled man. I mean to say, if a man’s in troubled waters I’ll want to tread them. Poets, musicians, fucked up thinkers, mean mo’fos. Marriage didn’t end the propensity. Give me a feral cat to bathe in the sink. To blow-dry and pet. My grandmother was a lover of people her whole life. A drifter on her back porch could eat her good food from a pie tin. Dust everywhere then but in her house. She said, Honey, you gotta love peoples when they down. I make pies and feed them to my husband. He won’t let strangers near the flat. So I feed friends. I love until there’s no love left. My friends lick the tin plate. I pick at the crumbs. Strangers leave a plate clean, love better, don’t leave me to fall apart. I’ve parted the hair of my girlfriends with a lick of grease while Marvin Gaye heated the room alongside the straightening iron. Of course my best friend married my boyfriend. Of course my boyfriend shared my love letters. What did I expect? It’s a mean world and there’s no denying how bad things can get. Marvin’s daddy shot him dead. I want to walk down the street, under the new trees in Detroit, and tell Marvin I understand. To let his daddy go. That---trouble don’t last unless you hold on to it.But that’s not true. Trouble is always. He knew that. You know that. (Vievee Francis)
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Thank you, Robin. "Give me a feral cat to bathe in the sink. To blow-dry and pet." This is Art, my friend, the whole passage about Marvin Gaye. That's words wiggling around on the page, swimming in life, forever.
This is wonderful.