5am

When did I become

a man?
It echoes like a wounded cry through my tired mind
as I shower at 5am.
I remember watching cartoons on my belly and wanting to be

a power ranger
did it change when my heart was torn apart

girl after girl?

I remember playing in the overgrown yard at my parents house.
did it change when I realized my father wasn't god?
Right now I'm naked, and writing in magic marker on the bathroom wall.
in my apartment shower stall.
wondering when it changed
I'm disgusted at the naked man.
his large hands and bulky muscles.
I feel sick and get light headed.

how pathetic.
I do this when I think of what I am.
when I shower at 5am

I smoke a pack a day and watch my relatives grow old and die.
I go to college and work and try my hardest to support the ones I love and fail over and over again
and I'm naked in the shower crying at 5am.
My lover and I fight like my parents did
and we're older now than when we were new
I watched my
grandmother
disentigrate
in front of me,
both of them.
Is that what waits?

And If I was to do something new It would feel like old while the shower is cold and I'm pathetic
at 5am

and the cold bulletin boards and chat are a cry for help and My music is a scream
like .... shut the fuck up...not you ...

... me

This is truth, and a rant and not poetry.
poetry is beautiful and this is ugly
but sometimes the words flow
and I don't know where to put them
they go where they go
and I write in rhymes like a death-rattle possessed
sometimes pretty
and sometimes old and distressed
and I'm just a sick sad old corpse of someones son sitting in a cold shower crying at 5am

If you knew me you would agree
but you read
and read
and call this pain poetry

and this in the end is all I am

I'm written on the wall while someone else writes me,
at 5am