Way Back When

I knew you way back when, before wet behind the ear was something to say, when your hop scotch game wasn’t an idea you ever thought of having for longer than the 30 seconds it was suggested. Can’t help but stay golden, all the time, every day. You may have seen better times but can’t say that you have and actually had any, but me and mine?; now been seeing em, living em in this hard cold concrete snow globe left to rat race devices divided into unwanted sectors will have to constitute for better times, or else. I stabbed you just a little bit, but I didn’t mean you any harm, just the ones who had taken what I didn’t know anyone wanted and never gave it back to me after they took it or told me how to get it back and I thought you were doing the same……it was so dark, I couldn’t see, I couldn’t see you coming, I never see em coming. I knew you way back, Jesus Weenie back, fighting off the “hugger” back, lying on your back for another reprieve….I’m staying Golden, staying away from a gray hue with any luck, from your back work. I didn’t mean to cut you…..I said I was sorry and I mean it much…a whole bunch, why don’t I make it up to you by letting you split a bag with me…..how’d that be darling? I levitate right on down 2nd Ave with a cheese blintz from Odessa’s as an offering to get in, in the first place, making it rain, then making it inside….secret society of junk ropers, feigning to nosh on a polite offering I know they don’t want, but they may share once I tell em, once I tell em she was down with the virus that can’t be shook…..they might give me everything when I tell em who….I knew them way back when and they knew her way back when, back before the open sores, bedtime cautionary tale led to a made for T.V. movie, deep in the depths of a pillow biting whore that use to lie, a little girl that had twins; boy, girl both shiners, both in it…..they knew her way back when…..that’s why they came you know….who would’ve thought they would did what they did, when they did it and to whom…..big sighs, loose thighs, busted lips, premature fake hips, cold shivers way before their time and a “Mommy” who would perpetually drop the eternal dime on a life that never should’ve been given. I’m sorry I robbed you; sorry I couldn’t stop sport fishing through your personal tragedies only to call UNO later in the game when I needed you to do something….learned from the best, the best in the buiz. Better times are never around the bend and never will be, but I love to tell you golden tales, tales of cities that never let you fall and where static fights the funk of a reality that permeates fibers like crack through those ashes you said you would replenish about 45 minutes ago and didn’t. I know you knew me way back when, but I have always been like this, I didn’t deceive you, but you wanted me to, so you would have an out but I didn’t because I didn’t birth you and you know better darling, way better. Pop that cap offa that water and stall em; I’ll be right back (not really) you hear me? Stay Benji, Benzo, baby……silent crosses form a catapult to the golden stay, keeps it at hand not at bay, isn’t that the aim? It is for me, you knew that….. She never promised you anything except the first one: the first breath, the first swallow of nourishment and sure as shit the first hit……that warm hot cider hug from Grandma on Christmas eve after a million chocolate cherries consumed while smelling sage, peppermint and cookies…..thank fuck for that hit. It will get farther and farther away with every practice run, but for now the hunt is good, the chase steady…and you, well you’re easy darling, easy as cherry pie in a sunny window. Remember way back when? Yeah, you’re right……I have always been golden, always this way….there was no purity spawned, only a shredded brace of a spine that could’ve existed if it hadn’t been ripped out the backside by her watchful eye, Shane too, you know……he doesn’t talk about it anymore. Put it to rest with a cylinder scalpel, me too….not enough though. We go way back us three and maybe you if you play your cards right, but due to you being here and all, you most likely did not, savvy? I would love to say it was you, and I will until I’m ready to hold you, but for now I can’t. None of us can. Especially her……not ever her. I followed her you know, right till the end, we didn’t get it though, Lisa did, but not me, not Shane, not Hannah….funny in a Holocaust way, not in the Alanis Morsette way that would put everyone at ease yeah? She set a lot of false standards with that optimistic apple picking pre cum situation, don’t you think? Odd there’s no law suit yet….but way back when……doesn’t apply does it? Strappin it on now seems futile, but what’s another fracture, another abscess, another ripped pre meditated episiotomy….planned by her. Maybe not golden, but merlot red more often than not, around her best…..that’s the best one can hope for just that, just a gas lamp getting close enough to make it wind down, make that throbbing intrusion go down, 6 years old is awful old when participating unwillingly in unwarranted adult activity….. As soon as I miss him, I think of our squirrel….our bloody squirrel….he held my hand, he held my hand until I stopped bleeding out…..he knew me way back when…that’s the difference, I can’t remember when……when I was…..well, you know..