1997

In 1997

the punk rocker read a book on this curb

returning now

fifteen years later

he doesn't remember until he begins crossing the street

and sees that spot where he sat reading Homage to Catalonia

one youthfully melancholic Friday afternoon

a few hours before she broke up with him

he has no book today

and he can't stop staring at his smartphone

he wants to share this memory with the world

but he pauses upon considering the red Mohawk

and the studded leather jacket that are gone

along with the band names that adorned him

today the sky is a coliseum of clouds

great white pillars of precipitation

marble monuments to a youth that is almost antiquity

back then he was ready to learn about everything

they would always fight the system

taking cigarette butts from ashtrays

to smoke whatever they could get

making music on broken instruments

getting animals high on cheap weed

love, teenage eternity, backseat betrothals

when she left she took his book

and he has never been able to finish it