In the piss-stained alleys of Reagan's America,
where hope choked on exhaust fumes and died,
your voice cut through like a rusty switchblade—
raw, unhinged, unwilling to apologize.
Mike Muir, Cyco Miko, prophet of the unwanted,
screaming truth while suits preached prosperity.
The forgotten kids in tattered denim vests
found something real in Suicidal Tendencies.
How could we laugh tomorrow when we couldn't even smile today?
Trapped in suburban wastelands, force-fed bullshit dreams,
parents and teachers watching with suspicion,
like we were broken before we'd even begun.
They wanted us to Join the Army, fall in line,
become obedient cogs in their grinding machine.
But you showed us another way—
chaotic, honest, flipping middle fingers at a system built to crush us.
The War Inside My Head raged like napalm,
anxiety and anger churning into something toxic.
Your music didn't calm it—
it gave it purpose, turning self-destruction into defiance.
When the world said we were nothing,
when guidance counselors wrote us off,
you screamed You Can't Bring Me Down
and we believed it, if only for three minutes.
Alone in bedrooms with peeling paint,
volume cranked to drown out shouting parents,
your music was the only thing that made sense
in a world determined to label us as damaged.
They wanted us Institutionalized—
therapists' couches and medication,
trying to fix what wasn't broken,
just different, just honest, just raw.
Controlled by Hatred wasn't our destiny,
though God knows it pulled at us,
that temptation to surrender to the darkness.
Your music gave us somewhere to put it.
Three decades later, the anger's still there,
maybe duller, maybe buried under bills and responsibilities,
but when those first chords hit, it rises again—
not as destruction, but as liberation.
Cyco Miko, reluctant savior of the discarded,
voice of the voiceless in a world that never listened,
your snarling poetry saved more lives
than any self-help bullshit ever could.
This is for the loners, the freaks, the unwanted,
who found family in distortion and fury.
This is for the truth you screamed when others whispered,
for the light you found in darkness.
This is for Suicidal Tendencies.
This is for survival.