16

Chuck Taylor's, leather jackets, and close cropped hair,
Hard-core delinquents, "And we don't fucking care."
Fist-fights, Milwaukee's Worst, and evenings at the bridge,
Thirty-foot bonfires, flames lapping at the edge.
Bi-state, correct change, and knife-slashed seats,
Poor girls, lots of condoms, frantic teenagers meet.
Skateboards, boneless ones, and ollies up a curb,
Ripped open flesh, a half-pipe in the 'burbs.
Skipping school, Monroe Shaw, and mornings at Aaron's,
Afternoons on the streets, West End neighborhoods war-zone barren.
Forgotten yesterdays, apathetic nows, "No future!",
Black Flag shows, stage divers needing sutures.

That was my life when I was sixteen,
Those memories seem little more than a dream,
But that time shaped who I am,
What I think, how I feel, and what it means to be a man.

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