BIRTHDAYS
kevin sampsell
When I fall down like this
I often see glass birds and my evil twin
chasing each other in ferris wheel fashion
in front of my eyes...
I forget things like
How to walk
How to put my glasses back on
How to let strangers brush my coat...
Landing on my head is worst;
my memories rewind to
the cord slinkyed between my mother’s leg
the pulling-out doctor pushing me aside:
“Here comes another”
and the clock slid... past... midnight...
giving us seperate birthdays
“Gotta make a space for the evil one,”
I think a nurse joked,
her eyes blazing like the sun
peeling my forehead
now
on the sidewalk
(I get headaches with nostalgia)
Some say it’s the twin thing
that something bad is happening
to the other and that’s why
my brain pounds and my balance
is destroyed;
a rose crushed in a dictionary
or a carnival ride breaking away from its stem
a dog licks my face
a blurry person is asking me questions
but I have no idea who they
or who I
or who is when and where
I’m on my knees praying to Dog
and the god becomes vicious,
biting me on my neck
like a vampire or a strange woman with a long nose.
This does not happen every day,
I’ll retrace my steps and tell you in the back of
the ambulance--
I walk twice a day
two miles each time;
I buy flowers and coffee,
I give my change to street kids,
I pet the dog.
I do all the simple things
of a simple man
in a simple world.
I eat sandwiches full
of cars and gates and garbage.
I go to softball games
and root for the team with the most
beer cans in their dugout.
I unlace my fingers from my penis
and lick my own semen
like any good catholic.
I am a normal male person
wearing a suit (and black socks)
with photos of my siblings in my wallet
and my hand extended,
recruiting new friends by the minute--
even when I am dizzy and hurt
from my twin falling down somewhere
in some secret part of the world.
One thing I do
to make myself feel not lopsided
is
I select an old photograph
of my evil twin every day,
and then I find clothes similar
to what he is wearing in the picture,
so that we match.
When I re-unite with my evil twin
on some night before our barely seperated birthdays
and we fill our stomachs with gin
in an effort to plant seeds of brotherly love
I will announce to him, like a spoiled child:
In two hours,
I will be older than you.
