We didn’t possess a lot of insight,
just a lot of adolescent myopia.
We were more metaphysical than our elders
gave us credit for.
We embodied something,
though we could never put it
into an essay,
for example,
or a letter-to-the-editor.
We held beliefs,
which was unusual for a generation
bereft of a mission statement.
We believed in the
power of neurosis and
weren’t ashamed of flaunting
our talent for posing the
philosophical issues
of life and death and
having no answers.
We weren’t searchers,
although we were self-taught,
to some degree.
College was never an option.
Options were never an option.
We maybe went to community college
for twelve and a half minutes or
got an internship at a
classic rock radio station
or went to work for a
wedding photographer
as a videographer’s gofer,
but most of our days were spent
smoking reefer in the back of
somebody’s El Camino,
listening to Pink Floyd’s The Wall,
reminiscing about all the chicks
we wished we’d balled in high school.
We never had a Defining Moment,
never came to any Epiphanies,
held devilish anger inside of us,
but were graced with instincts of godhood.
We were alive with the
eye of the tiger syndrome and
became something of an
unsolved puzzle to human service workers
who couldn’t wait to drop us
from their caseloads.
Then one day we just sort of started
settling for less
than those who didn’t even
have the opportunity to
negotiate for more,
while everyone else
had tomorrows to burn.
deuce coupe 