He said boring, safe.

He said 9 to 5, nothing brave.

Well, he’s got it in his head that he’s special, he’s a rebel

‘cause he’s only 17 but the walls are lined with bottles,

‘cause he’s only a kid but he shreds and he’s bled

like the best of the living, breathing, plastic models

under lights like lines and smoke like signs.

Alternative *******, kicks convention like a stone

on a dodgy, moonlit road laced with beaten brick and bone.

But I walked that street with your own two trees--
shivered in the neon glow—

and you’re just a hammock swinging between them, same as me—

I know you know.

We were thrown into the forest, stood together, two by two,

and if you’d dragged me into the shadowy thicket right along with you,
invited me out grasping at poison with your avenging leeches—

maybe I’m not so unfulfilled as you’d like to believe when you’re giving speeches,
strumming and shaking above me, so proud to break away.

Alternative *******, look this way.

I listen to the *** Pistols, jack.

I wear leather.

I text in class.

I sneak trinkets on the side,

under the table, on my mother’s unwitting dime.

Last week I put *** in my pineapple juice because no one else was home.

I write on the walls, I run in the halls

with scissors, with a smirk.

I chase ice cream trucks, I blow off homework.

Don’t you scoff at Metallica, call it an old man’s band.

Cats are badass, son, mine will tear up your hands.
And the garbage on your T-shirt wouldn’t be around to fuel your *******

if Metallica hadn’t taken the stage and taken the hits.

So when you come to town after the laughs fill a decade,

and you want to reunite so the memories don’t fade,

I’ll meet you for drinks sometime after five,

and I’ll go home in time to wake up before nine.

And you better listen close when I tell you how happy I am,

how I work alright 40/7, saying yes sir and no ma’am.

And maybe I drop acid under a bridge between F and M,

splash the city walls and bathroom stalls

with expletives and half-brained philosophy on a whim.

Or maybe I hug a homemade quilt and wait for the clock to tilt

while some ****** sitcom grasps at humor under oath.

And maybe I do both,

and maybe I’m smiling either way.

I’ll tell you this in tumbling words and phrases from our old days,

and then I’ll tap a finger on my soda, safe as houses,

houses like the twin towers that we came from, weighing ounces,

and I’ll ask about you.

And I swear on my 9 to 5 life that I hope you’re smiling too
when you tell me how the band is doing great, playing shows,

how the records fly like spinning pizza pie

in grimy downtown windows.

And when you go home into the stars and you pick up your guitar,

I hope you remember an earlier night, no matter how distant it seems,

that syrupy discourse when I gave you dollars for dreams

and you thanked me with words like boring, safe, because of some one-day preferences.

I hope you realize that I can smile through acid and expletives

just as well and true as I can smile at quilts and clocks,

so don’t put me in a box.


My happiness doesn’t need your special stamp of alternative approval.