Two Poems
\m/
I didn’t know any teenage metalheads.
A few of us had skateboards and Screeching Weasel tapes and instruments
we could barely play. Our high school’s art wing was decorated with faded
murals of Megadeth and Metallica album covers. Everyone knows Metallica. If
they graduated, Pantera fans would inevitably head to Parris Island. Nobody
wore Slayer t-shirts as far as I recall. Someone did have the good sense to paint
the Stoner Witch sleeve art in the science wing, but that was long before I
grasped what it meant.
I didn’t know any teenage metalheads.
Mike Fxxxxx was a few years older and lived across the street. He got the Van
Halen logo tattooed on his shoulder. I never liked much besides “Hot For
Teacher” and anyway hair≠\m/. Mike Bxxx was my age and he played a lot of
Leisure Suit Larry and Doom on his computer. Someone got him into Dream
Theater. Going to his house was weird, partly because of the video games and
partly because his father—who I never met—had stacks of old Penthouse
magazines that reached my knees. I’ve never been that tall, but I was thirteen
once.
I didn’t know any teenage metalheads when I was a teenager.
One of my older cousins—but not my cousin Mike—did freestyle bmx in the
late ’80s and had a bunch of Metallica posters on his bedroom wall. There was a
NWOBHM poster, too. The significance of the latter didn’t hit me until much
later, either. And I still hadn’t heard anyone rock Slayer. Then by the time I got
into Death, Chuck Schuldiner was dead and I was too old to know any
teenagers.
I didn’t know any teenage metalheads; sometimes older men grow out their
hair just to be shocked at how much it molts. In high school Mike Cxxxxxx and
Mike Gxxxxxx started wearing t-shirts of all the hardcore bands I would get into
when I finally left town. Few people liked them and Gxxxxxx smelled so bad that
I heard some teachers would disinfect his seat after class. He definitely did it on
purpose. Unlike some other kids, I don't think they ever got into heroin, but I
can’t be sure.
I didn’t know any teenage metalheads, but the two budding junkies I used to
work with at the city hospital would steal clean needles from the nurses’ stations
at night. They’re both still alive, they friended me on Facebook.
To The WorldThis is
God to the
Color palettesMy brain
Found it and
Pixellated our eyesOn fire
A friend and I
Ran through the
Scale of the
Logic board, let’sLet’s start
Running through
To the worldTo the world
This is
A friend and I
Pixellated our eyesMy brain
Ran through the
God to the
Logic board, let’s
Found it and
Let’s start
On fireRunning through the
Scale of the
Color palettes