Pathological Liar?

Birth:

Ft. Worth, blind until age thirteen

languages learned with ease but unspoken now

your parents:

from birth or adoption?

Irish

or German

or both?

And you say you were transient:

to North Carolina, Georgia, Ohio--some or all, maybe

Eyesight restored at puberty

adolescence spent proudly serving your country

with blue bionic electric eyes

all this while dating a girl in Winston-Salem

and a boy in Akron

while using and dealing

copious amounts of drugs

separation and death ending these trysts

Honorably discharged

due to diabetes

sisters, brothers, parents, relatives

I have yet to meet

all with comparably confusing histories

Ten degrees earned at various schools

which are somehow useless now

you worked as a nanny, and in construction

while knowing all about factories and theaters

You're an expert at taming tigers

And somehow your cousins are Asian?

Then the blossoming

of the greatest love of your life:

how boring your two years with her must be,

compared to your first exciting twenty

(3/18/08)