POEM: to know better

To accept responsibility
is to accept your pain
that place you acted out of
because you didn’t know any better

Now you don’t want to know any better
even tho it’s in front of you
confronting you

Because to know better
would mean you have to do better
and to do better would be to know
to admit
to own
that you should have done better
done things differently
would have done things differently
if they’d been different for you
better for you

But they weren’t
better
or different
and that hurts
to know

doesn't it?

POEM: Thrombophilia

My father’s blood
slow, thick and sticky
runs awkwardly through my veins
the arterial flow connects us
despite his familiar absence

Genetic markers cannot be drained

no leech could suck me dry
remove the wretched poison
no hemorrhage will empty me
of him

Our blood is stubborn, clots too easily
a shared mutation
clogging the rightful flow
blocking the way, immovable

This anomaly has left me
with a permanent red stain
on the rest of my life