I ain’t afraid of you.
I’ve stared down the shaking, weaving barrels of guns held by idiots lucky enough to be holding the right end.
I’ve faced down homicidal rednecks who didn’t know what to make of green-haired, orange-suited punks not even peaking yet.
I’ve heard bomb squad and brain surgeon jokes in four different languages. (Hint: they’re all the same joke.)
I’ve lost my true loves by car accident, insane asylum, regretful phone conversation and boredom.
I saw the greatest minds of my generation destroyed by literary criticism.
I’ve seen the only refuges of the desperate, so foul even the crabs wouldn’t pay the two dollar crash to stay there, sold as half-million dollar time shares to restaurant franchisees who couldn’t name a Lou Reed song if you spotted them the “do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do.”
Hell, I sang Lou’s songs on the Capitol steps as Wilbur Mills chased Fanny Foxxe into the Tidal Basin. I watched the wag drive the Mayflower van around Pennsylvania, 15th, the Elipse and 17th Street that balmy August night, right where I’d blown shotguns into the cops’ horses’ mouths every Smoke-In.
Motherfuck, I got thrown out of the Atlantis before it changed its name to a number for dancing with no shirt. I was there when the opening act’s fans cut the lights on the Talking Heads and pelted them with bags of cherries.
I saw Fess splinter his hundredth piano and the hundred degree, hundred percent air actually raining into the beer box at the Dream Palace.
I’ve seen decades arrive with Raygun at the wheel and John Lennon in the trunk.
I listened to hydraulic engineers explain how a lake at one elevation wasn’t going to rest until a city three feet less was equalized. While a government official denied that 10,000 people a reporter had talked to in the previous minute weren’t really at the Convention Center where they’d been interviewed.
Oh, dear, young, naive 2017. I’ll give you a day to strut and fret your hour upon the stage. But, all due (zero) respect, you got nothin.
I grew up ducking and covering. I came of age dancing on the razor’s edge, watching old black and whites of Slim Pickens yee hawing the missile down.
I know you’re supposed to be the baddest anybody’s seen, but come on.
If you can’t scare me to pants peeing in the first ten minutes, you’re just another fucking year.
To my regret, I’ll probably see a lot more better than you.