I find myself
Visualizing your glasses
When he removes his.

I imagine his crooked tooth
When I see yours
Impeccably aligned.

I learned a new word today,
Cafuné,
Translates
To the act of tenderly running one's finger through someone's hair.

I grew fond of the act
Long before
Getting hold of the word.

I know not whose I prefer
Now his I adore
But as much as I do yours.

This is a *******
Torn by emotions
We have history, we share chemistry
I love you
Though I love him too
Cannot think of him
Without thinking of you

This is a *******
I have come to loathe
But the truth is
I belong to both.

Write it down
That thing
You fantasize about.

Write it down
Those words you dare not
Say aloud.

Write it down

Now is the right time to write
When words will not sit tight
When they cannot match
Whatever you hold inside.

Leave it all to feeling
Will give these words meaning

Write it down
What silences your mind
Exactly that
Which makes your dear heart bounce.

It is a wall to climb
And one to knock down

Write it all --
The words do not need to blend
It is then
When feelings make the most sense.

Write it on paper
My love,
The one who will answer

One who can read
Lines that are not poetic.

That is what poets do

They romanticize pain
They idealize the torment

There is solace in darkness
Which they craft to enlighten;

Lure with words
The forlorn is adorned
Guilt is charming
Mistakes rewarding

That part that is revolting
The best line in their poems.

That is what poets do

They embellish heartbreak
To cement the heartache

But as soon as they leave their paper
and beautiful words captivated readers

Life can no longer render
The adequate metaphor
Agony is agony;

There is no substitute for it.

Two loves I have, of comfort and despair,
Which like two spirits do suggest me still:
The better angel is a man right fair,
The worser spirit a woman coloured ill.
To win me soon to hell, my female evil
Tempteth my better angel from my side,
And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,
Wooing his purity with her foul pride.
And whether that my angel be turned fiend,
Suspect I may, yet not directly tell;
But being both from me both to each friend,
I guess one angel in another’s hell.
    Yet this shall I ne’er know, but live in doubt,
    Till my bad angel fire my good one out.

Only we'll ever know our story,
The full story,
Just you and I.

And only you and them,
Will ever know your full stories,
You and all God-knows-how-many-of- them.

But now it seems all our stories share pages,
Intertwining and overlapping,
And that's the most harrowing part for me,
Because I wanted one story,
Just you and me.

I dread to turn the pages,
To find out how this ends.
I fear a happy ending does not await us,
But what I fear more is that you're not finished
Writing stories,
Without me.

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