where as a child I'd hide in poetry

I’m slightly too old to be of the
“here we are now, entertain us” generation.
Just barely still the
“where do we go where do we go now where do we go” generation.
Both as metaphor and literally.
We did not burn out young and pretty,
here we are,
in mansions of our ill-advised dreams
looking chubby in red-cornrows asking
“where do we go now?”

That’s an ad-lib from the original demos, you know.
They had no lyrics for the little breakdown there
and Axl Rose was sing asking
“where do we go now”?
not in the love affair with the sweet child
with blue eyes when she thinks of rain
or whatever
but where do we go in this song?
And it felt right and they went with it.

The opening solo too,
was Slash just practicing a
string-skipping exercise
and Axl not being a guitarist
thought it sounded cool
and it became anthemic to my generation
a generation where it was still cool
to be cool
even though it was on accident.
So they went with it.

Whereas “Smells Like Teen Sprit”
was a herculean effort
to seem effortless.
A tightly constructed
not-at-all-accidental
attempt to get the fame and fortune
they had to pretend they didn’t want
by distilling down every element
of every Pixies song
then processing it into radio pop.
There were no accidents
in the aw-shucks we’re-not-even-trying
“here we are now, entertain us”.

And Jesus Christ,
Lennon and McCartney would tell each other
when one had a good idea for a hit
“I’m writing us another swimming pool”.

And I don’t know what that means
and I don’t know what this even means
or what the hell to do with my life
or how to end this either
I mean, like
where DO we go?
where do we go now
where DO we go?