the next episode

       
an eighties child...a chic mod    
listening to Prince and Bowie  
watching ET. Pretty in Pink, The Breakfast Club, the Goonies  
preppies sporting Izods and members-only jackets  
dreaming of living in Malibu and going to Pepperdine college    
Reaganomics and D.A.R.E or drug abuse resistance education  
   
it didn't work on me  
I had a wild streak  
I dare to try heroin at seventeen  
I dare to investigate the seedy side of life first hand  
   
by age eighteen I was on methadone
fighting a hardcore addiction  
that year I rip and run just to survive
stealing to make a living  
   
I was down and out before it was popular  
the nineties had nothing on me  
I killed myself many times over  
living every day like there would be no tomorrow  
I thought I would never die  
I believed I was immortal  
   
Curt Cobain popularized heroin and death  
glorified it even  
the years of grunge  
today Seattle collects the souls of lost teens by the thousands    
   
now here we are in the twenty-first century  
it's all about technology and text talk
people don't dare anymore...they are afraid  
huddling in computer protected homes  
left communicating with our gadgets  
   
what's the point of all of this  
I don't know  
I fear I'm closing this chapter of my journey  
I haven't been well  
I have to see a specialist  
to see what's wrong with my guts  
   
I have no energy anymore  
I fear my thirteen years on methadone--  
suffering chronic constipation    
may have been the beginning of my end  
my dad had stomach cancer  
I fear I might too  
   
tomorrow I see the specialist and begin testing  
I won't let them cut me open  
I don't think I will do chemo  
I think I will end this chapter  
I'm bored and I don't like what I see anymore