Greg (graphic poem)

had a more interesting life than me I think.

Or originally he did. 

In fifth, into sixth grade I sat with what let's call 
the untouchable nerds: the kids no one wants to deal with. 

Greg was in our cafeteria one day (George Fischer had 

two cafeterias in the basement there) and he said I should 

go with him to the other cafeteria where the kids he was already friends with 

were. So I started hanging out with them from then on. 

My cousin Bobby & my Aunt Laura gave me my first cigarettes, 

Newports, but the other kids in my school smoked Marlboros, so 

then I smoked those. And we invented our own safe-spaces, 

where you were the least likely to get hassled by some 

tallie who'd write you up and tell on you to your parents 

unless you had the 2K on hand for a bribe...nobody had money 

for bribes back then... 

And by the time we were 15 or 16 or so and going to punk shows 

in the city. (Maybe not relevant: we went to VFW shows, 

whether the DAE's were playing or not. Tried to start a band 

because they started a band. Practiced, maybe, all of three (3) times 

and played two songs of a show, broke up. 

I remember Joe's girlfriend showed us her pierced tit/s in 
Joe & Mike & Bob's one-bedroom apartment in Carmel -- 

when Video Forum and even Blockbuster Video were still there, 

the rest of New York not having lazily grown around their shadow 

or replaced with new buildings yet, if at all.... And Joe was the sort of 

tallie who was in his early/mid 20s and told us who Crass were and 

Mike used to play that Blatz song where it continues in some 

fasciculus behind my left ear... And 

Greg and me and I think Shaun and whoever else piled into the car that day 

to drive to Greg's nice, two-story house in Lake Carmel ( a few miles away 

from where the Linquists moved later after they got out of that 

shack house in Mahopac) and being teenagers -- what other reason would 

there be for this -- we measured ourselves, by ourselves, in the bathroom 

one at a time, honor system stuff, and I got fed up with it 

on my way through the door in...said, "Four And A Half Inches Of Terror!" 

and then whenever later Greg fucked that skinhead girl in the courtyard of 
ABC No Rio when the organized among us were trying to 

get rid of problems, or at least minimize them, so... 

This doesn't have a deliberate point, so you know. 

Greg got into all kinds of trouble before we turnt 18. 

He smoked crack with this kid Brian for a while, 

sold a ton of his 7 inches for nothing -- we all likely still 

have one or two if they survived the moves -- and Brian's 

pretty young sister... 

Except for Casey, who he didn't hang out with as much as we got to be 21 

and older: I really couldn't stand being around Greg's friends. And 

it was mutual. They were obnoxious and I was obnoxious and I maintain 
I still have a better sense of humor. 

At any rate, he moved south in 2009 or around then. 

I kindly doubt he'd write a poem about me. 

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