Should i compare me to another’s form
Use their appearance as mine own blueprint
Mold my body into one else’s norm.
Could i oust myself to fit their imprint
And force myself to become but a hint
Of the man I once thought myself to be.
If i were to lose my personal tint
Would my life then lose authenticity?

Instead I compare my body to me.
Forget old models, I am the new first.
Born not of man but mine audacity,
Forged in mine own mind I arose headfirst.
The brightest rebirth to date I became
Someone wholly new and not just in name.

i practice putting patterns in my poetry
i know you can hear them popping
and pushing through parted lips.
starting and stopping and starting again
trying to take trash and make it treasure.

she never beat me black and blue
just made sure i knew discipline
was the back of her hand, the width
of a belt, a smirk on her face as if
she became a righteous being when
her palm turned my cheek.

my tears turn into to holy water
burning their way down swollen cheeks
she doesn't like it when i cry says
shining eyes are a sign of selfishness, says
i should be your everything, i give you
everything, why can't you give me peace?

grasp at the air, try and
clutch the body the mind forgot.
feel the chill of empty air beneath
spread fingers reaching
for someone no longer there. keep
reaching for a familiar body and find
foreign instead. find
newness where old curves sat, see
harsh lines where bare arms used to lay, feel
that foreign body. commit it
to memory. remember
where old flesh resurrected, where
he left one body not to migrate
to another but to rebuild, and
remake, and recycle, and become
something new. how he became
someone only he knew.

as i untie trapped tongues
and undo knotted nerves
your smile slips unto lost lips
and words wake inside your throat.

when those words walk the path
from your mouth to my eager ears
know how i crave creation
that comes from tied tongues.

there's a monster in my closet
he's been there as long as i've breathed
he has moved where ive moved and seen what i've seen
there is a monster in my closet that looks just like me
he moves how i move and sees what i see

i feel like a narcissist.
like i've met jesus and told him
wash my feet, make my supper,
sacrifice me for your sins,
and call it divine intervention.

i met god only to tell him i've stopped believing.
walked up to his gates with my own key
to denounce sinners and saints
for i know humanity to be both
and neither all at once

see i feel like a narcissist.
not one born from man and his ribs creation
but something else - someone else entirely.
i do not follow any lords blueprints
i draft my own and title them the First.
adam and eve be ******
i am a new type of human
for i know my sins intimately
and shall sow them into a new garden
to know well the fruits of my labor.