Do You Bore Yourself?

Do you rent the space
you’re standing in,
owning nothing in the end
but default?

Do you recycle words
until their utterance fails,
mistrusting your ability
to say what’s right?

Do you hedge your bets,
never going all in
for fear of losing the very thing
you haven’t got?

Do you count the days,
as tedium destroys spontaneity
and all energy drains
from your lifeless form?

Do You Bore Yourself?

(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2016)

You sit
by the
seaside
waters
edge,

and blue
sky
embraces
you,

and the
afternoon
sun
light
dances
through your
tangled
angel hair,

and the
ocean tide
strains to
touch you.

and the
salt air
intoxicates
you,

and for
a moment
you are
as free as
the seagulls
that hover
like salt and
pepper
pilgrims
above you
on the
breeze.

and you
sit and
wonder in
this moment
and what
your life
has become,

and you
smile
and God
smiles
with you.

and I
smile
for you,

and reach
to catch
your eyes,

to be
intoxicated
for a while

like the
tide that
moves
inside you,

the open
heart that
beats within
you

I reach for
nothing else.

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