How do restaurants
That don't have any desserts
Keep getting business?

If I were a teacher,

I'd teach plagiarism
Like a patent office.
I'd teach publication
Like plagiarism,
And I'll proofread
Any paper that properly
Cites their sources.

I'd teach every
Kid from age X to Y
That if I can't
Lift them as
High as they
Want to go
Than somebody
Else
Can.

I would be the man,
That teaches subjects
Like I'm their King,
And I'd spread
Knowledge to every
Acre of my empire
I'd teach anything.

See,
I'd teach chemistry
By making the reaction of
Why and How
Always synthesize
Wow.

I'd be a catalyst
For positive change
By keeping every
School-yard bully
and kid that's always picked last
Around after class
To teach them physics,

Like if you have mass
And you take up space
Then you ******* matter.

I'd put the cool
in Coulombs.
I'd be so electrostatic
About magnetic fields
You could feel my fluxin'
Energy in the hallway.

I'd say
His story,
And Her story,
And everyone in-between's story,
Is about the day their parents met.

I'd teach ***-ed
Like it's about the
Day their parents met.
And it wouldn't be weird
It'd be beautiful.
Because anybody falling
In love is beautiful.

And speaking of beautiful:

Mathemagics,
Would no longer
Be a bottomless hat
But a bird.
With feathers and wings
And things that always
Find their way home.

I'd transform
The Fourier of
Our foundations
With equations
Of equality
Like you,
And I are
Always equal to
Us.

It'll be cake
To be genius.
....Or pie
Or whatever else is rational
In this situation.

And I
Would measure intelligence
With the answer to the question
Of why we are alive.

I'd standardize
Every test
By removing
Any box that
Takes us
Further apart

I would make art
Combining every
Color from East to West
In a masterpiece
That every child can draw
We'll call it "human"

I would solve
World hunger
And war,
And every other problem
That stems from greed
With answers to the
Questions that I still
Don't know

But I would show
Everyone whose ever
Made you hurt
That a broken heart
Has still got the
Courage to beat

Because it's their words
Where the heart breathes
Where the heart bleeds
Where the heart sleeps

And it's our dreams
That keep us awake
In the wake of our past

So I'd put every love letter
And box of their ****
On a bonfire, light a match,
And we would watch it burn.

Hell,
If I were a teacher
I'd say there's
So much left
That I've still got
To learn.

She hates the city
Say street lamps
Are too cold
For marshmallows,
Too far apart
For hammocks
And a little too yellow
For stars.

She loves daisies
Especially when they're alive
And drinks sunshine
Like it's a fireball
Bottle at a bachelor party

She
Has got a body.
Like a Lego fire walk
That I can't help but
Move across
Slowly,

On the parts of her
Past that build us
Omnicolored castles
Of Kings and Queens
And treasure chests
Too small to hold anything
Outside our own imagination

And I,
Her ready loyal Knight
With nothing but
A dull promise
On the edge of my tongue
Laying my rusty faith
At her feet keep

Moving
Like my eyes
Across a line
Across a line
Across a line
That I never
Want to stop
Reading

Her edges
With my fingertips
Like the map
To my home
And her lips
The closest thing
I've got to
A key

But she
Is not the type
That needs a night
To see the stars

And I
Am not the type
To write poems
From fireflies
That I never learned
To let go

'Cause I know my life
Has seen enough jars
Of my amputated parts
To know you don't have
To be broken to be used
To picking up the pieces.

But baby break me.
Like a firefighter
With a family of four
Who knows the risks.
With your arms
'Round my fists
The only chance I've got
Of making it out alive.

So baby hold me
Like a papier mâché
Tugboat from articles
Of my past that I no longer
Want to pull.

And my plaster heart
Heavy,
Ready to be made
Into something new

With my hands full of skipping stones
I no longer have the stomach read
'Cause I don't wanna leave her life
Without being buried somewhere beneath.
But I don't wanna dig too deep
Before I figure out just how to breathe.

So every time she leaves,

I wear my teeth
On her scent
Ribs bent
In the direction
Of her return.

For the first time
In a long while
I've got a fire in me.
And this time,

I'm gonna let it burn.

My mom
Tells me I'm a gift.

She says love
Is what keeps the atoms
In you and I
Is the moment
She caught my
Father's eye
Is the day
My grandfather died
With a candy kiss on his cheek
She had never tasted something so sweet.

When we were little
We played kickball,
The ground is lava
And hide-and-go-seek.
As I grew I knew most days,
It was harder to find myself;
Let alone somebody else.

And I have been around
Enough center city playgrounds
To see the rich
Pump every bit of spare change
In their veins fighting
A cancer that they
Never learned to put in their past.
To see the poor
Wage wars with themselves
Trying to pick up
Way too much,
Way too fast;

Nobody really knows how to make love last.

So put your prism your heart
Beneath the moonlight.
Refract the wavelengths
Of your wonders
Into ROYGB-eautiful like the sea,
It took a lot of jellyfish to let
people see through me.

And even more mirrors
To find a place I was comfortable
Praying in.

Fraying in doorways
Where I learned hope,
Is looking both ways
On a one way street
Cause it can be so easy to thank God
While you still have bread to eat.

I have never prayed
So hard for a healthy meal
Than the days I remember
The heart is a muscle;
And sometimes the only
Thing we need
Is to "work it out."

And I know that some days,
My doubt hangs my
Smile like Jesus Christ
I never quite learned
How to bleed right.

But if there's one thing
I found from cleaning
The crosses out of the
Empty hallway of my character
Is that you haven't experienced loss
Until you've held two outstretched arms
For years waiting for your innocence to come back.
Nothing, weighs more than the guilt of your past
And nothing throws punches
Faster than the ghost of who you used to be.

And I know it's hard
To stop looking for yourself
Under every bed you
Left nightmares in
And I know it's hard
To be comfortable
In your own skin

But sometimes bars
Aren’t the only thing
That builds a cage
And sometimes
The only way to live
With yourself
Is to stop digging
Your own grave.

You can spend years
Listening to morticians
And never get grounded.
Surrounded by the
Square roots we all share,
By the same air,
We've all got to learn to let go.

To learn that
Holding your breath
Has never been how
Living things
Learn to
Grow

Back home,
There is a boy
With red hair, freckles,
And eyes the shade of blue
His mother calls "lady killers."

He's colorblind;
At least enough to believe
In jellyfish.
His father builds houses
With a rib-less heart
The boy calls home.

His mother,
Sews trust with her spine.
And thirty years later
They still find love
In the lonely isles of
The local Laneco.

His teacher says
He needs a pen pal,
So after school
He writes to me:

"Hi, how are you."
"I'm fine, thanks, and you?"

And then he asks me
What it's like to be
"Grown up"
And just how many
Stars I've scarred
With nothing but the rusty
Edge of my name.

So I fold the
Envelope of this
Crinkled heart into a letter
Of tattered Bibles
From hotel drawers of
Lost loves and dead friends
And find the courage
To tell him what
Being a man means.

I tell him:
We call it growing up
Because boulders
Always roll down.
It's refusing CPR
For every time you drown
In your own pride.

It's loving a girl
For every time she tried.

Tried to
Convince your tunnel vision
That her body is not a cave.
That respecting a woman
Is more important
Than how well you pave
Your parking lot heart.

Shallow like a baking pan.

This is an apology.

For every man
Who ever thought a woman's body
Is the only temple worth praying to.
Making four leaf clovers
From petals of roses
Trying to get lucky.

I know it's not lovely,
To kiss someone who
Is so constantly
Full of *******.

And I'll admit it.
I'm not yet
Where I need to be
But I thank God
That I'm no longer
Where I use to

See I'm used to
Smoking way too many
*** scenes to know that
There is not enough
Alcohol in the world
To ever clear my mind.

And I have caused way
Too many Prozac commercials
To know that there is
No effective dosage
For this disorder
Of indecency.

To know that it is
No measure of good health
To be well adjusted
To a sick society
Of mechanical men
Always worried about
Who and when they're going
To plug into.

So I tell him:

You are not a robot,
A computer, or a program.
And your choices are the only
Thing that will ever make you a man.

So strap up your boots,
Bury the ashes,
Shake the dust,
And dandelion your
Heart in every
Direction of home.

But most importantly,
Go easy on the ladies;

Because
The older I get and
More I learn about myself
The more I'm writing
With my eraser
Than with anything else.