“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

She's the kind of girl that laughs at her own jokes.
Not in the way where you are left thinking
she is the center of her own universe
but in a way that makes her the center of yours.

I sat next to a boy with the prettiest hands on the bus; I
was too scared to look him in the eye. They reminded me of
yours, thin and pale and with veins laced through them of
the palest lilac. I sat across from a woman on the train
today and her eyes were the most captivating thing I'd ever
seen, a sparkling amber that caught gold in the light. But
it wasn't until I followed her off onto the platform and saw
the stretch marks, like bolts of lightning, like cravasses in
a cliffside, the same stretch marks that you hate so much on
your own skin, the ones i trace with the tips of my fingers
as we attempt to inhale each other, between her shirt hem
and pants' waistline, that I realized just how much she
looked like you. I see you everywhere, and in everyone.
One shade of your eyes glinting in a passing subject sends me
into crippling nostalgia for the wet sparkling I saw when you
told me how beautiful I was for the last time. I never took
that chance to tell you just how beautiful your hands, your
eyes, your flaws are. I can't believe I never took the chance
to let you know just how beautiful I find you, because I
have a fear I never will.

i don't watch home movies
hate them
reason being because
when i was young
i was looking for a movie
my mother
had recorded for me
and accidentally
put one in the vcr
that i'm not sure
i was supposed to see
i know the obvious response
"uh oh, ****"
sorry to disappoint
they were only marked with dates
  1991
on live television
montel williams asks my father
"how can you just throw
your child away like a piece of trash?"
   1994
i spend so much time
in the emergency room
that my parents stop
penciling in growth marks
on the frame
of my bedroom door
i always thought
it was because they believed
i would never grow out
of this sickness
sometimes i believe
the reason that they
never bought me a dream catcher
was because they never thought
i'd live long enough
to see them come true
   1996
i am eliminated
from a spelling bee
because i didn't know
the 'dad' is silent in 'family'
   2013
before i got into poetry
i used to do standup
none of my jokes were funny
one of the other comics
tells me my skits are dry
sometimes sad
he says "why don't you joke
about something like your family?"
so i say
"i never wore any sunblock
because i didn't want anything
to keep me from my father"
i say "what do you call christmas
without lights or heat?"
before he has a chance
to answer
i say "1997. better yet
why don't you
make like a dad and
leave"
   2014
every time we drive
past the hospital
my mother reminds me
how much it cost to save my life
like she'd rather
have her money back
she doesn't have to say
that sometimes she wishes
it was me who had died
instead of my brother
i can hear it in the way
she says "love you"
sometimes i imagine
that if i were to die
that she
would pick out a casket for a child
because she never loved
the person i became
yesterday i told my father
how close i'd been
to suicide lately
and he said
"that's my boy,
livin on the edge.."
and i can't remember
if i laughed
or cried