It was
a great hazy time
Spent spinning off with
Strangers in a
paradise of
Broken glass, trash,
citydebris,
Blasted cab commotion, emotion,
And occasional loss of
primary motor function.
Do you remember?
It was late-to-class spastic
Sick
all-nighter madness,
Gratuitous haywire hormone
Havens of badnasty
bliss.
Do you remember?
Paul with paws
drawn wide
Cocked black socks pulled up and
Fifty-seven rubber bands on one wrist
Drawing on the other with a
Black
magic marker
Gone
snood-crazy or weeping
On the roof with
holes in his
Arms with brand-new friends
And two bottles of
Steel.
Or napping to
Dillinger three-
Puffing camels screaming in
The shower with
an expander in
His ear and a
beer in his hand
And whipping out his big fat
Notebook for everyone to see.
Do you remember?
Jed the
beer scholar and Johnny-on-the-
Spot guitar
pub-crawler wrapped head-to-
Toe in
duct tape, locked in the bathroom
Grinning like a
maniac or chucking
pink
Down the fourth-floor stairs and
Trying to
force a trip.
Do you remember?
Breakable once, now
broken, somehow
Fixed Jen B, who blamed
All her
bad habits
On me,
And
played a game that only once got
Lost, though we were so far
Gone, we didn't even know
Where, or shooting
magical brown gack from
both nostrils on my
birthday jacket,
A
bible-belt princess gone bad so good.
Do you remember?
Big Mike Trice the twice-the-price
Cuddly Bear, gentle,
clumsy, wearing trip
Five soul New Hamshire style and there
Behind the
B-Boys poster, the moptop
And the innocent grin, was a
secret
Life of wire and
random numbers.
Do you remember?
The power-plug for
Jade we stole
From
Fuckin' Rau that
Instigated a
gay porn war in the bathroom?
Do you remember Hannah?
Or the guys across the hall--the ones
With the room
something had died in--
Do you remember?
Skate-punk stencilboy Tom Patterson
Blasting off the
fire extinguisher
Stone drunk at 3 AM five feet from the RA's
Front
door the night we had the most
Excellent collection of
contraband booze we'd
Ever assembled.
I've never seen a bunch of drunks
Work so efficiently or quietly, and
That hall was sparkling by four.
Do you remember?
Jessie painstakingly painting
Perfect trout on a
desert sky
Downing doublepints of
malt
So fast it melted your eyeballs,
Screaming
bahgel for bagel and
Behg for bag before beating the
Ever-loving
bare-knuckled shit
Out of me.
Do you remember?
Do you remember the
TV we
Found on the sidewalk with its
Wiry little
throat slit? We stole
It from the trashman, smashed its
Face and left it on the roof like
A silver-screened rape victim.
Do you remember?
Do you remember Tiffany
The hugger,
PA mama,
Yuengling chugger,
Whose mother sent me pictures--
Snowman pornography-- online?
What a fine time.
Do you remember?
Cesar the
13-ways-of-looking-
at-a
Rum-lover crowd pleaser,
Walking straight into the RA office
With two
40s in a bag and a
Blitzkreig haircut, nothing but
A hand-talker,
comic book shop-
Stalker, block walker, the only
sucker
Dumb enough to ever
Loan me clothes.
Do you remember?
Michie, that
bombshell
Heartbreaker,
Rollergirl ballbuster
Smoking
mota to a
Silly
giggling blissed-out, blessed state
Or dragging hair on skin to ruin nerves
And sever senses, creating present tenses
Or fitting three to a long-john bedspring.
Do you remember?
Walking
the streets of Brooklyn
Easter Sunday for a
Scrap to cook and
Finding
fish because the
Turkey had burned.
Cesar coming in to class
Clad in
sweats and
leather
Posting a comp for
LCD
And weeping, giggling in
Uncontrollable exhaustion.
Do you remember that
Mod kid?
The one we all
hated.
I wonder
what became of him.
Do you remember
going to war with
The
neighborhood kids, who egged
My bed from street level
Through an
open window,
Enraging Bear, who upended
A carton of
spoiled milk
On them?
We kept the window closed after that.
Do you remember?
Leaving
The Gardens after
Four-o-clock close to
Find
Guinevere passed
Out on the bar and some
Poor
lonely bartender
Bumping lines off the
Counter--
I wonder why they shut down.
Do you remember?
McKenzie
code-talking,
night-walking,
Chalk-writing dark findings in
The quiet of the welcome suite,
Asking me the questions that
Could shut me up and make me think.
None of you were there.
You wouldn't remember.
Jordan and Leah, portioned, scorched
On
Eeeeeeeyeah and the
Ravequeenjunglegymjamjuice.
Leah was a
cutie gone creepy--
Must be something in the air in
Maine.
Jordan was a
kewpie on coffee--
Rolled all night like the evening train.
Do you remember?
The night I got weird in Jordan's room
And someone's little sister found me
Very
amusing in the closet as pieces of my body
Ceased in sequence to
exist. Jordan
Was less than pleased with me, and Paul
Had to walk me back home shuffling
In the snow leaving trails where my
Feet might have been. That may have
been the beginning of the end of us.
Do you remember?