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’