Fartin' Around

As boys of the back burbs we often got bored

so we'd have to make our own fun

when pleasures didn’t come at the end of a chord.

It didn’t take a lot when the summer got too hot,

when we were just ten and friends and hangin’

up in the bedrooms head-bangin’.

So behind the door, “Let's get this party started!”

“Take off the shirt, make it hurt,”

that’s how we did it when we got too dull-hearted.

So down on the floor, “bed ‘em and spread ‘em!”

blasting off with our brotherly affinity

and trying out some masculinity.

Beatings and belches and “dude make ‘em louder!”

deeper and meaner, sharper dealers,

hitting our squealers so we couldn’t be prouder.

Saying “Make some noise! Turn up the boom!”

Just a couple dudes learnin’ and burnin’

and goofing ‘round in a room.

But then I remember the harsh shame I felt

when they’d all proved themselves,

and I was never proud of the punches I dealt.

They could be so rough and tough and manly,

but my lame young guns and crushed beer cans

weren’t making me feel like much of a man.

So we lit ‘em and laughed, we did our passes,

and we broke them out and choked

and laid ourselves down in all those hot gasses.

The leaner, the meaner, the better for dudes,

so lewd and crude, but it’s all we knew

about what the “real men” do.

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--Poems from the Sprawl