Communication 153

do you remember the scene?

do you remember the scene?
we were seventeen
having hijacked the local
record store
near derelict wasteland
towards the edge of Wicker park,
we’d all get high
sleep and stay
in the shade of
the Kennedy expressway,
it’s all too easy
to forget the scene,
strung-out dreamers
stitching together
a sound track, a song,
the ammunition
to forge a foothold
in a world
more confused than the one
that died out
before we were born,
the dream has left me torn

do you remember the scene?
hundreds of tattooed arms and necks,
a massacre of skin,
strung-out dreamers
slowly dripping heroin
into a body that could take
just about anything
I don’t even know where to begin,
it was me and you
frequenting the haunts
of Milwaukee avenue,
those dives and doorways
have long since gone,
having been replaced
with "everything that’s wrong",
we were all just trying to survive,
to keep the scene alive,
do you remember Pete?
he died, he’s gone,
he was strung out for far too long
and the others?
they were forced
to conform
 
looking back now
I wish I’d never been born,
the scene has gone,
and what about me and you?
we never saw it through
you left for pastures new,
I stayed, refusing to let go
of a time that died out years ago
do you remember the scene?
we were seventeen,
strung out dreamers
stitching together a song,
the ammunition, a bomb,
something to show the world
long after the scene had gone
that we were here, alive
way back in the summer of ‘95’