First Edit: On my 36th Birthday

[vagabond]

I realized today I'm six years too late     changed the line breaks here, just a suggestion
to copy you, 
reborn through failed deaths,
while I like to think of dying                          something like "i still thing of dying" or "can´t help think of dying"?
as that far away dog on a prairie plain.

I accept I'll never be like you,                               I´d leave out that line
there are no metaphors to describe
my uncut thumbs.                                                           could it be that it is thumb nails? or just nails?

But I'll still try to understand you:        
disillusioned with love,
burdened with family,
judged by tulips.
You, who transformed suicide 
into a poetic device                                                              
by translating death's foreign language
like a prisoner at gun point.                                      i´d omitt these last two lines to emphasize the two  lines above.

While I count the candles on my cake,
aware they must be extinguished,
you live the only way a dead poet can.           this last stanza gives me question marks (but ok, just my view),  maybe either make it clearer ot leave it out. "poetic device" would be a  strong ending.