I was barely 21
when I ran with this older crowd,
(they were between the ages of 30-35,)
and I thought it was something cool,
something special,
I thought I was someone
real grown up and mature,
I thought age had something to do
with sophistication
so, I tried to impress them with Bach & Beethoven & Mozart
while drinking rotgut whiskey out of cheap tumbler glasses
because that’s what I thought grownups
were suppose to do
but instead they’d say,
“this isn’t that kind of party,”
and then they’d exercise their drinking prowess by guzzling down a whole bottle
of Rumplemintz and chasing it with a case
of Icehouse while blasting Screeching Weasel so loud that my neighbors couldn’t exist.
my forethoughts of adulthood had been marred by the stench of reality
and despite the headaches and hangovers
that paired with the morning sun,
I continued on anyhow,
matching them drink for drink
like it didn’t phase me
because I had something to prove;
I wanted to show them
that I was cultivated,
that I could hang,
that I was tough,
that I could run with the big dogs,
that I was all that was man,
(whatever that means)
all I wanted was their approval
that I was something
after so many years of being told
that I was nothing
and I wanted it to be known that I had endurance and stamina
but those addlepated simpletons were too vapid and clueless to notice the ****-stains
in their pants let alone what I was doing.
we were an odd pair, different yet the same;
we shared the same desirous need for intoxication yet our levels of class
were on a parallel universe.
but as time went on,
the framework of realization took shape
and I began to see they were just a gang
of losers with no place to go.
they used up my living quarters
as their party sanctuary:
people getting tattooed in my kitchen
people snorting coke in my bathroom
people ******* in my laundry room
people throwing up in my closets
people ******* in my living room
and it grew tiresome after a while.
so, I had to kick them out of not only my house but out of my life for good.
decades went on, I reached my 40’s,
they reached their 50’s,
and most of them are dead
but the few still living are more dead
than those buried in the ground.
they’re out there now,
enduring a midlife crisis
with bed-wetting regression;
peering down from the hills of nostalgia,
sprinting towards their
social media platforms,
losing their minds over
things they can not control,
smearing opinions around
like **** as if you asked for it
and gnawing away at the bars
of their enclosures for one last taste
of the honey, the pleasure, the folly, the glory
because they’ve become
embittered with world;
a world they hadn’t envisioned
a world they weren’t ready for
a world that’s changed forever
and after all the wild and lawless nights
and after all the rebellion against authority
and after all the broken glass & cigarette holes
they’ve became like everybody else:
unable to face the inevitable.