How A Poet Stops Himself From Screaming Incessantly

Half a century ago,
a fugitive miracle
of shared pleasure
brought me here.

Two strangers joined briefly in joy,
then stayed a long time together in guilt
or shared and dreaded sense of duty to have me,
though they did not want me.

Brought up to be
a good deal more ignored than wanted,
forcing myself (through a mix of overreach
and misadventure) into as many faces as I could,

I have lived a hot life of sweat and discomfort
trying to run from the accident of my birth
that they made me feel, one way or another,
each moment of each day.

Here I am, half a century later,
asking questions I was born with
with only slight changes
to accommodate the changing times:

If I am formed, how is it that
I should I not be formally acknowledged?
If I am perpetually streaming live
is that not enough to say that I by definition flow?

No matter how I affirm for myself that I matter,
I still flatter myself that one day others will agree.
That day I will try to forget
that the two who made me

never chose to see me
as little more than the regretted pleasure
that ended up meaning nothing at all
and that would not fade away.