The exceptional thing about us
was not that we survived
on speed and weed alone,
burning textbooks to keep warm
when our slum-lord crashed the furnace.
Nor the fact that all the cops in Madison
knew us by name, were bored
by our vomiting and nudity.
And we never made any real breakthrough
in late century metaphysics,
in spite of reading Rimbaud
and staring too long into Swedenborg.
We named every kitchen cockroach
Jesse Helms, failed
all the easy classes on purpose.
We believed in garbage and guitar.
We cried a little every day to please ourselves.

Still, from here it is impossible
not to see that we left some portion
of our crass divinity hidden
under the northeast corner of the Park Street
overpass, along with some Marlboro Reds
and our spray-painted crossbones.

Dear Eternity, suppose we didn’t know better.
Forgive us our trespassing and stolen beer.
Remember it was always snowing,
or about to snow, and yet
we still fell through love at least once a week,
and we still knew how to imagine
we could outlive ourselves at least.