2002:
today i kicked the door
to history off it's hinges
my jealous frame:
still too proud to say a word
it seems my folks forgot
to pencil in growth marks
cause they thought their boy
would never grow out of small breath
******* dead, years now buried
and i bare his name
too many syllables
for my father to go back
fish & play football
to stand in the yard and play catch

1994:
my mom, the bombshell in retrospect
broke her back in her sleep
a thousand times
since the stairwell in 87'
she still sits for spills
post nuclear about settling
now from the couch
she's a weather report
spouting nonsense
that makes my father
grow grey, crack remotes
& slam doors to dark rooms
abandoning ship
for "cheers" & "scienfeld"
while my mother
sometimes forgets
and sets his place at the table
and my appetite is abducted
by family photos
my mother says things like
"go see your brother today"
-- Johnny's long gone
don't you remember?
we buried him
the day your smile died

2014:
you are inches from me
******* a stray hair
caught in the fabric of your coat
the last remnants of a dog
we laid to rest last week
and here we are
in the hospital again
people don't shake like dogs
finality is found
in the eyes of humans
passing archways
into shallow rooms
where plague and prayer
are the only songs sung
round the stagnant clocks
it makes me wonder
if the clipboards cry
over being the last thing
someone ever writes on
take a number, have a seat
stay a while
i am back, 7 years old
& there are different doors now
they buried the ones
you kicked in that night in '92
when my lungs
were filled with holy water
you never stopped smoking
*i never grew out of asthma

I am worth more than a look.

I am worth more than a glance.

I am worth, more.

I have limbs, and flesh, and blood.
I have a heart, I have a brain.

Maybe those things don't always work properly,
but I am worth more
than a sorrowful observation.

Don't you dare tell me I'm not,
because I am
worth
something.

I know I am not perfect,
but I am
worth
something
more
than a single look.

My body, my mind, my spirit are all so incredible.

I am worth more than a look.

It's such a shame when people change
When laughter turns to silence
But can you say you've stayed the same
Through all these years of violence?

and i am eleven again
feeling like tomorrow
is a couple yesterday's ago
smothered in cayenne pepper
hot enough to take off taste buds
and tonight i am eating a meal
only worth burning
it tastes like my parents anniversary
it tastes like a zinfandel
left on the counter too long
it's a bad story, see
there's no silverware
'cause my mom sold it
to keep the lights on
and somewhere in heaven
somebody in a suit
doing commentary
on this fiasco
is telling someone else
in a suit that
"you have to eat love with your hands"
so we sit, four plates on the table
for the two of us
my brother's long gone
dad's even further away
& he's not the one who's buried
i carry both their names like anchors
that i cannot unmoor from
while she looks at the empty table
and says something about the news
she says something else
but she's not talking
we aren't proud of this, see
my dad likes to wax his car
he's proud of it
and my mom says
she sees a lot of him in my hands
says, i touch the things i find
like they didn't belong
to people sleeping in the ground
she says i touch photo albums
the same way-
you know,
i never used to believe
that history could repeat itself
not until i could
fast forward seventeen years
and still wake up to smoke alarms
how i would go into our kitchen
to find it empty
and the dinner smoldering
& my mother in her bedroom
looking through family photos
like it's a just another summer day
and the sirens are just the birds
i don't ask, i never say a word
in this moment
i am an archeologist
afraid to dig up the past
cause history repeats itself-
you see
my brother is dead
and my father is gone
they have been for some years now
and my mother
sometimes forgets
and sets their place at the table
like they're still here
and in the confusion
ends up ankle deep
in pictures of how it used to be
she let's dinner burn
and douses it in red pepper
hoping i won't know the difference