Underworld Daydream

The myriad choices of his fate
Set themselves out upon a plate
For him to choose
What had he to lose?
-"Black Angel's Death Song" more confusing musings from Lou Reed

As I paused to lick the stray drop of caramel sauce that managed to bespatter my CD player I realized that I had become very depressed. The state of the world was getting me down, keeping me in a Coca-Cola bottle to be viewed and ultimately forgotten as a piece of caffeinated, sparkling pop art. And the only soda machine that sells Coca-Cola is in the opposite direction from where I need to go. It doesn't even come in bottles.
I spent much of a day sprawled in front of the heater, flipping through the Arts section or reading more books about music and depression until my eyes lost focus on the page. I've had a birthday but I can't get my head around the new age. My pile of presents broods in a corner, books unopened, shirt unworn. I long to go out and kick something.
Rich kids these days will do anything for a thrill- buy a John Lennon album, shoplift, get baked. They want to rebel but there is nothing to rebel against. Angst and despair comes pouring out of the psychology books, off the blogs, off the pages of the newspaper. They are bored with the American dream because they prefer the great American road trip or the great American drugdream. Genuine hippies cry for them. So do I, but I still want to go kick something.
I simply can't be bothered. I am too bloody lazy to stand up, walk to the door, tie my shoes, and kick over a garbage can. I try to channel my innate violence into something creative by bruising my fingers in the guitar or the sketch pencil while other people, middle class like me or the rich and the bored, shoot smack into the veins that run through their ankles.
There are people who don jackboots and kill each other after football games. There are people who join the army and die in some faraway lonely desert. There are some shot for requesting peace, others trampled to death for going to a concert. A girl was stabbed in a hotel room and a lonely boy OD'd in a New York appartment. Rich kids die of boredom and go out to play Russian roulette with the needle: which one gets HIV? Drunks crash out on streetcorners to be kicked to death by the clockwork orange. Some of them aren't even out of high school. Teenaged boys kill people on mountain roads and we still want more: more alcohol, cheaper pot, more thrills.
Will I die?
Eventually, I suppose. I don't want to see it coming, neither from the firing squad, the suffocation, nor the needle. I've planned for life so far and I try to live by the law (at least for stupid things, like poetry books, the library is a lot cheaper than shoplifting). Secretly the young know they can live forever unless they live out the Underworld Daydream and maybe even then.
My inner self longs for hair dye and piercings and jackboots, old Undertones albums and Joe Strummer's leather jacket.

You lie, steal, cheat and deceit
In such a small small game don't you know it is wrong?
To cheat a trying man don't you know it is wrong?
To cheat a trying man don't you know it is wrong?
You better stop
It is the Wrong 'Em Boyo!
-"Wrong 'Em Boyo" original Reggae by The Rulers, ska cover by The Clash