I didn’t ask to be born
and I wasn’t born, really.
Cut from my safe haven
by the cold stainless steel
of a surgeon’s scalpel.
I’ve been cutting back ever since.
In the same womb responsible for my creation
I rewarded my progenitor with a death threat
a scarlet-red ticking time bomb
for a mother afraid of needles and
stomach-turned by blood, guts and viscera
even at fifty-six.
Centuries or even decades ago
I would have killed one or us both
before I even drew a tiny breath.
I don’t remember many birthdays
of my thirty-one.
I’ve seen pictures
false memories planted by photographs
I’m unsure which is more real.
Birthdays aren’t celebrated as you age
especially when you’re a man.
There are no parties, few gifts,
and really, I think we prefer it that way.
The attention can be uncomfortable
but every breath is a reason to be grateful
and to celebrate. Especially when you weren’t
really supposed to exist in the first place.
I like to joke that I wasn’t born
I’ll say I was removed, evicted,
pulled screaming from my mobile home.
We all enter the world screaming
if we have lungs with which to breathe.
I think there is a wisdom in newborns
they have a sense of the horrors that await them
the terrible frightening beauty of existence.
We know it, innately, and we scream.
As adults, we recognize life’s bitter hardships
and we know that another year
sweatily slogging through the mud and the mire-
no better reason to sing.
Here at thirty-one
I can’t decide, the way this world’s turning
should I sing, or should I scream?
I’ll do both until my throat’s burning
like a Linkin Park song from ‘03.