Richard Ramirez Died Today of Natural Causes
by Sun Kil Moon

Richard Ramirez died today of natural causes. He got amped up on speed and broke into houses, bludgeoned people to death, wrote shit on their skin and left them. They finally got him and he went to San Quentin. His last murder was south of San Francisco. A guy named Peter Pan, from the town of San Mateo. The little girl in the tenderloin was his first, and in the laundry room he took a dollar from her fist. His last free days were at the Bristol Hotel. I was reading “Nightstalker” when I went and rang the bell. The doorman buzzed, said, “You’re just like them all.” He gave me a key and a black cat led me down the hall. I had a flight today from Boston to Cleveland. Got a death in the family, gotta do some grieving. Lost my baby cousin and it’s eating me up. And I’m achin’ real bad and I need a little love. Richard Ramirez died today of natural causes. These things mark time and make us pause and think about when we were kids, scared of taps on the window, what’s under the bed and what’s under the pillow. And the Jim Jones massacre got in our heads and the TV headlines, “Elvis Presley’s Dead”, and the Ayatollah Khomenei hostages and Ronald Reagan dodging bullets. One day I’m gonna stroll through the old neighborhood. Rick Stan’s my age, he still lives with his mom when he’s not in jail from menacing and stalking, writing bad checks and cocaine charges. Mark Denton had such a beautiful smile, always sat on the porch passing the time, and drinking a beer and smoking a pack until one day poor Mark had a heart attack. My friend Ben’s got a good job as an electrician, his sister married the pool shark Jim Evans. And my next door neighbors whom I love so, and they love me too, but they passed long ago. And if you walk just a few blocks down Stahl there’s a house that was the scariest of them all, a cute little palm with a sign “For Sale”. For those Sexton’s kids, life was Hell, and I’m telling the truth and if you don’t believe it, pick up Lowell Cauffiel’s “House of Secrets”. Had to fly from Cleveland to SFO. I got 3 months off until my next show. Gonna spend time with my girl, make a record this summer, fix my kitchen up and hire a plumber. The headlines change so rapidly. Today I came to the studio to work on something pretty, then I saw the news on James Gandolfini while I was eating ramen and drinking green tea. The “Sopranos” guy died at 51. That’s the same age as the guy who’s coming to play drums. I don’t like this getting older stuff, havin’ to pee 50 times a day is bad enough. I got a naggin’ prostate and I got a bad back, and when I fuck too much I feel like I’m gonna have a heart attack. I woke up today, I saw the headlines, an airline crashed and 2 people died, and I’m at a barbecue in San Rafael, and everybody’s drunk and feelin’ pretty well. At 53 years Richard Ramirez died but in ‘83 he was very much alive. He was the scariest killer in the band. He had a pentagram in the center of his hand. And everybody remembers the paranoia when he stalked the suburbs of Southern California and everybody will remember where they were when they finally caught the Night Stalker. And I remember just where I was when Richard Ramirez died of natural causes.