BALLAD FOR OUR FORMER SELVES
*
Eddie calls you late Monday night: breathless, xx, anxious; he breaks the news: They got Ando, busted him at a party. Eddie saw--a drunken insult, a shoving match, the cops and a bag of cocaine.
It is nothing new. The same shit, the same trouble as all the other angry youg men just hungry for a piece of it all. I have heard it before, and honestly, if I were to have written your story months before now it would have ended the same.
*
Outside,it snows beautifully, tranquilly. The first snow of the year. Queens is rarely this motionless; there are always cars in the street, passengers chatting on the sidewalks. Is it mourning for one of her own, one of the many nameless shadows that stalked her deserted alleyways and dark cornerns young and angry and up to no good?
*
A few years ago we were cocky, careless. Climbed a thousdand fences and fire escapes, smoked blunts in the street and drank fourties in the alleys, broke into abandoned houses and subway stations... We were invincible, running breathless when we feared we'd been caught, exhilirated when we escaped pursuit, often collapsing in giggling piles and lighting cigarettes a few blocks away, safe for the time being.
We lost that innoncence. Life has made us bitter: I understand that. Living, frustration: it all took its toll. Some of us submit, get their shit together, start working slowly toward some sort of end, some sort of semblance to a normal life: work, family, friends.
Some of us rebel, believe we can take what we cannot touch. And when those of us are lost, it is just another of many footnotes to the same story.
*
Your friendship, you know, I enjoyed it for what it was. General troublemaking, the late night drinking sessions that always revealed more than we had intended, the gossip and parties and trsut we had in one another. But, if I'm honest, months ago I knew this was coming, months ago I said my goodbyes and resigned myself to the eventuality of your fall. These stories, there is very little difference among them; the heroes running scared, or getting locked up. Pride does in a man starring in the epic of his own myth every time.
Three, four years at least. When you return you will be a very different person from before. I wonder if you will still giggle when you laugh, or if the things you will have seen by them manages to take the giggle out of you and replace it will a gruff smirk; I wonder if jail will make you humble or more angry; I wonder if I will even see you again, free man or not.
Maybe.
Eddie calls you late Monday night: breathless, xx, anxious; he breaks the news: They got Ando, busted him at a party. Eddie saw--a drunken insult, a shoving match, the cops and a bag of cocaine.
It is nothing new. The same shit, the same trouble as all the other angry youg men just hungry for a piece of it all. I have heard it before, and honestly, if I were to have written your story months before now it would have ended the same.
*
Outside,it snows beautifully, tranquilly. The first snow of the year. Queens is rarely this motionless; there are always cars in the street, passengers chatting on the sidewalks. Is it mourning for one of her own, one of the many nameless shadows that stalked her deserted alleyways and dark cornerns young and angry and up to no good?
*
A few years ago we were cocky, careless. Climbed a thousdand fences and fire escapes, smoked blunts in the street and drank fourties in the alleys, broke into abandoned houses and subway stations... We were invincible, running breathless when we feared we'd been caught, exhilirated when we escaped pursuit, often collapsing in giggling piles and lighting cigarettes a few blocks away, safe for the time being.
We lost that innoncence. Life has made us bitter: I understand that. Living, frustration: it all took its toll. Some of us submit, get their shit together, start working slowly toward some sort of end, some sort of semblance to a normal life: work, family, friends.
Some of us rebel, believe we can take what we cannot touch. And when those of us are lost, it is just another of many footnotes to the same story.
*
Your friendship, you know, I enjoyed it for what it was. General troublemaking, the late night drinking sessions that always revealed more than we had intended, the gossip and parties and trsut we had in one another. But, if I'm honest, months ago I knew this was coming, months ago I said my goodbyes and resigned myself to the eventuality of your fall. These stories, there is very little difference among them; the heroes running scared, or getting locked up. Pride does in a man starring in the epic of his own myth every time.
Three, four years at least. When you return you will be a very different person from before. I wonder if you will still giggle when you laugh, or if the things you will have seen by them manages to take the giggle out of you and replace it will a gruff smirk; I wonder if jail will make you humble or more angry; I wonder if I will even see you again, free man or not.
Maybe.