there’s something so precious about childhood delinquency,
ripping off wings of innocent things still flying pretty in the air.
why do kids destroy the delicate,
the breathing bodies of inchworms gutted on the playground,
caterpillars given autopsies on the curb.
the thieves of breath.
but when faced with something already dead by nature’s hands
kids run screaming shielding eyes or poke with a stick,
why can’t we dissect the deceased instead of kill the living?
during recess time too many insects die by the hands of the curious child.
we graduate to teenage years, trade soda pop for Pabst Blue and Natty Daddy.
recess becomes after school, we still gather in a circle to play,
some kids leave their killing years behind or some still curious,
trading insect carcasses for other vices, iced tea butchered
with vodka rum and whiskey, principal banned water bottles at school.
but Davie and i were the kids who only operated on the dead.
ninth grade after school we rode skateboards fast, eyes peeled for the discarded,
collecting every cigarette butt from school to my house found on the dirty wet road,
sliced them open, spilled their sorry guts to smoke from my bong at home,
the taste is still unmatched, moist garbage dirt fluttering through my lungs.
a sort of metamorphosis,
cigarette to butt to sloppy gutts,
inhaled deep by two kids with the best and the worst intentions.
we did no harm by gutting butts and smoking their insides,
together we never stole, lied, or took a life from a full-bodied Camel, Marb, or Newport.
Davie and i, the cigarette butt experts,
maybe the most genuine friend i never realized i had.
always the friends you look back on who you realize were truer than you thought,
Davie made me laugh at a time when i was crazy,
but he still rode home with me collecting butts to dissect, curious kids at recess.
WILDsound Writing Festival 