hey sterling,

the last time i heard this song we were in your room in the house in belgium, drunk and pissed off. remember the gnats that flew in your face? things had taken a turn for the worse, not unlike now. there were tons of people, standing around and drinking. (no one ever seemed to do anything in europe and i'm not talking about the fact that europe is filled with a lot of parties and a lot of drugs--so is everywhere else, i guess. what i mean is you never catch anyone in action--literally moving around...doing something...)

i remember staring at you, trying to figure it all out.

i'm tired of trying to explain, you said.

you flung open your closet, revealing a huge american flag hanging along the inside of the door.

"justice!" you growled, to no one in particular, as you knocked open your zippo and torched the entire bottom of our national symbol.

the crowd sterling and i ran with was mixed: europeans, american, africans. there were always a lot of arguments, political and otherwise, but in that drunken moment there was a unanimous cheer and stomping of feet as the flames jumped higher. i threw my stella bottle against the wall where it exploded into millions of pieces of cheap brown glass.

there were a few screams but then everyone cheered again.

the flames licked the ceiling and turned it brown. i looked across the room and saw that everyone's eyes were yellow and prehistoric.

and you, by the mostly empty closet, lighting a cigarette off the display...your conversation piece contribution to the party...

(you were james dean you were the acid zar the teenage criminal you weren't going down easy you would be put a stop to...)

we were wooping it up, you and i

then someone woke up and grabbed the fire extinguisher from the hall

then the days turned into years