—for Bam Margera
By Johnny Cate

Modus operandi: grace cut with chaos, every
drop-in a death sentence he’d somehow
skirt and skate off to nollie another day. 

If we got our hands on a burned Bam DVD
we’d play it until the player was hot to touch,
until every trick was etched into the mind’s 

fish-eye and we were sketched up
with strawberries trying to land one like him.
The kids who by high school couldn’t hit  

a heater pitch for shit or cared to run suicides
found a home in the sheet metal half-pipe,
a new American pastime and a hero in  

an unhinged prodigy. Jackass came later—
what mattered first was the skating, each
varial and crooked grind a live creative act 

that left like a vandal Michelangelo, bank
rails marked with paint, curbs darkened
with candle wax. But the rebellious aesthetic 

was just that—aesthetic. A sly disguise for the
same glory, the guttering flame of a single
God-breathed second. Under Bam’s feet,  

the deck spun like a plywood electron,
elemental and holy: 360 degrees of don’t-care
that would carry him to self-destructive stardom. 

Now, hardly a day goes by that TMZ wouldn’t like
to eat him alive, so I’m pulling up the tape,
posted by a stranger, just to see what I saw  

years ago on those long-gone discs: a man
risking blood and bone with total nonchalance,
his soul sliding recklessly, breathlessly diagonal. 

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Johnny Cate is a poet, copywriter, and vintage T-shirt collector from Asheville, NC.