hoolicant's.

it was summer, 1999.
my friends and i were young, free, fast and alive.
we played rock n roller music and cared too much about us.
we'd drive from street to street in the middle of the night,
smoking cigarettes and cussing in jokes about fat people.
always looking for a school to skate or a friends basement to crash
or a neighborhood pool to swim.
we new the gate code.
it was ours to rule.
to reign.
to destroy and respect and rebuild.
we were good.
smarts and competence never infringing on fun.
life.
the balls of it all sitting in our back pockets as mothers made us pizza
and let us watch movies with their daughters all night long.
we got pulled over a lot.
we were the young ones driving around at suspicious hours in the rich burbs.
cop candy.
always guilty, but never doing anything wrong.
we championed convincing cocky policeman that our eyes were red because we'd
been in hot tubs and up too late.
that we wore toboggans in June because we liked them.
that we were just hanging out in that strangers garage, with the babysitter, and her ex-boyfriend was coming to pound one of us so we were hiding their, in the dark, with baseball bats, and we had no clue about a burglary at a house around the corner.
from which the dogs traced the scent straight to us and that garage.
no, i wasn't smoking weed.
i'm wearing patchouli because i liked it.
yes, you can search my car and call the canine unit.
i promise you, i'm not high. 
innocent.
misunderstood, absolutely.
but young and free and fast and alive.
rising up to climb whatever proverbial mountain we thought we were on.