I had to walk out of physics today,
make my way to the back of the room
shoot for the door
with my hands on my hips.
Just started pacing.
I just stated pacing and pacing and pacing.

I followed the thin grey lines between the linoleum tiles
with my toes
counting every second I was out of class
and weighing that against how many more it would take
on a chance against hell
to get me back in there again.

I wasn't smart.
I never had been.
I just filled in bubbles correctly and I wrote
all the right things on a convincing, cliché
college paper.
I don't even know why I took physic,
but it sounded like a good idea when I was eighteen
and scared
and had some woman with a long braid screaming at me,
"advising" me that it was the "right direction."

I didn't even know who I was then so how could she.

I could mouth off a good response or two and I
probably embody every great literary character
in commercial fiction that is
the guy in the grey skinny jeans reading Shakespeare
in the corner of the dining hall.
Well, I'm not.
I'm not some stereotype for your next
creative writing assignment.
I just happen to think my *** looks good in skinny jeans,
I actually hate Shakespeare,
and the corner of the dining hall has the best air conditioning.
It's that simple.
There's your answer.

But my fingertips were shaking and my mind was racing
and there I was
just pacing and pacing and pacing
because this
is *******.
This class is *******.
This college is *******.
And the whole world
might as well be *******
right along with it.

I never went back into class that day.
Which ***** actually because I lost a good backpack and calculator,
but in the long run it worked out alright
because here I am
writing this
and getting paid for it,
not that I'm greedy or anything
(I get paid a whole lot if you care to know)
but I'm writing more than just about
that day I couldn't breathe in physics class.

I'm writing to tell you
that there's quite a great deal of superficial things in this world
and if you find yourself a part of it
I'm demanding you leave.
Leave your good notebook, your steady job, your filthy marriage.
Leave it because it's actually true no matter how stupid it sounds
that life is too short
and things that are real
need to be attacked and clutched onto
if you want them to last.

I guess I can thank that institution actually
for teaching me everything I never wanted to know,
and for getting me to where I am
with multiple publications, a book signing or to, a beautiful wife,
three kids, a screenplay, oh
and a big
F U
to those that said I would never do it.

(Dr. Hefer, that means you).

I'm taking an elevator to the
top of a building full of
people who don't care to know my name.

And on the way up,
my mom calls me and asks me
"Where are you?"
and I have to tell her
"I don't know,"
because nobody actually told me
on the way in, and I'm alone,
and the elevator isn't moving,
and my bank account isn't moving,
and now that I'm home
(which I'm not,)
((which I am,))
I can't figure out how to move my feet,
and so my legs aren't moving,
and my arms aren't moving,
and my head isn't moving.

And basically, I'm not going to
dance for these corporations,
so they're not going to dance for me
until I'm back on an elevator, singing
"Hey there, Delilah.
How's it feel to be exploited?"

But that's okay, because despite
my arms, legs, feet, bank account,
and this elevator,
my heart is moving.
And the continents are moving,
and this planet is moving,
and there isn't a CFO on Easy Street
who knows how to slow us down.

I knew all day that you didn’t want me.
The sirens rang, red flag tear ducts, and I
was just waiting for the bomb to drop.
I felt it, in my gut as they say,
like a paperweight, and choked
on all the tears before I even knew
they were coming. Here’s the thing—
you asked me. The rest spoke for itself.

The dress, the earrings, the phone call, the couch,
your gym shorts, glasses, and answering machine.

But we went to dinner, and you called me beautiful.
You threw croutons over the table, made me laugh,
let me hold your hand while they brought my iced tea.
I even found myself picturing you next to me.
I spread my palms, open, but I didn’t ask for a thing.
Yet, you kept defending yourself, explaining everything,
and I just wanted you to pay for the two of us to eat.

Your face is all that I see. Then why, why do I find myself
time after time again in these situations
where I keep plugging myself into equations
that obviously aren’t meant to be? You’re so sweet.
But if you searched through the crowd,
I’m not sure you’d want to find me.

I should have left you on the couch. Honestly,
I knew all day that you didn’t want me.
But I kissed you a million little times,
let your tongue explore my silent confessions,
willed you to find yourself
through the spaces of my mouth.
I should have just left you on the couch.

You’ve dammned yourself to hell,
crawled weakly back, back, back—
you knew where to find me.

I know, because I’ve dealt massiveley
with the way you’d hold me backwards
upon a plateau of lies that smell like liquor,
like liptstick, and like twisted lullabies.
No one should have to fall asleep at night
to an I told you so or the just let me go to sleep.
I know, because I’ve been hit without being touched.
I’ve catapulted through your dense disguise,
getting stuck in the aftermath, losing
myself in a realm of make-believe promises
to keep—
*******. Just keep yourself away from me!
I know, because I’ve loved you.
And maybe not in the cause and effect wedding band way,
but the kind where I was immersed, evolved into madness
from your lips on my lips or your hands on my hips.
I know, I know that you’re upset
with who you’ve finally become, because I know you.
Terribly enough, I know you.

So when the white blankets you slow with silence,
an invisible massacre, I’ll know—
I’ll know because I’ve almost been there—
that my face turned soft with glow
will guide you home
because I’m the only real thing you’ve ever known.

I'm studying real poets.

Shelley, Sandburg,
Frost, and Wordsworth.
Coleridge, Blake,
and William Butler Yeats.

Do you know why they're
considered real poets?

Because they made art,
not hashtag trends.
Wrote from Experience
with black quill pens.
Sure, they got high,
but wrote on instinct.
And The Road Not Taken doesn't
mean what you think.
They wrote about about life
and the world that they heard,
not ******* in the margins
of Microsoft Word.

Sometimes it was as if she sipped chlorine
from little bottle caps with yellow nails,
tilting her skeletal neck back,
balancing it on a vertebrae that popped
through the top of her pastel blouse.
Really though, she ate media on sandwich bread;
believed anything in bold with twin quotations.
She was a hint of a woman, blue eyes. Translucent,
fair, a suggestion haunted by her own demons
that she dreampt about after I stayed up, waiting
for the sleeping pills to kick
in. After the baby came she obsessed
over her thickness, was confused and destroyed
as she called it by the miracle I laid in the crib
every night. Old photographs weren’t memories,
just reminders of how she used to look.
She would scream, explode with frustration,
when the baby wouldn’t stop crying, begged
Why doesn’t she like me? But it’s hard to hold
onto a ghost, sweetie. So she swore,
and she swore that tomorrow would be better,
she would get better. But I know
that once again I’ll make her a breakfast she’ll never eat,
rock the baby back to sleep,
and loop myself around another sunrise
just to feel warm again.

a boy once told me
I was just like the moon
so beautiful
yet so hidden

that boy was my sun
and I was his moon

I was okay with being the only moon
in his heavenly world
as he was my only sun

but the moon and the sun are tragic lovers
and soon enough
we became their tragic love story

I am homesick
For a place
I have not yet found.

I know about the necklace.
How you re-gifted a leftover reject present
from a buddy who mentioned it the day before,
and I know about Lyndsey and the book of YOUR
favorite poems you bought for ME. I know you call me baby,
but I also know that I’m not the only one.
You demanded a certain elegance
that I always thought I carried, but really
I was just a bag of apologies
for simply existing in the same space that you were.
You know the night that I got drunk on cranberry and *****,
called you twice, and cried into a box of homemade
chocolate chip cookies? That wasn't the first time
I sat at your chair in your sweatpants
waiting for you to return from wherever
you said you weren't. I know about what you've done.
But, of course, as you so eagerly expected,
you’ll come in with a sigh and sleek smile,
and I’ll unclothe myself as I talk about
every detail of my day even though I know
you never bother to listen. I’ll lay naked
in your bed as you cradle what you believe
is your biggest mistake, while I silently hope
that faked ignorance can mask the reality
of how beautiful I should be and how ugly
I never wanted to admit you were.