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Sep 2014
Maybe my writing
Will improve
When strewn over
Blue lined graph paper,
Tiny boxes,
Coaxing out order,
Perhaps even
Clarifying boundaries
Between crazed truth,
And detrimental lies.

The grid putting
Poem in context,
Poem like graph,
Displaying
Levels of THC
Depression
Number of Kisses
Tears Cried
Outliers of secrets uttered.
Box and whisker plot
Displaying anxiety,
Skewed data toward extremes.

No.
Linear writing would
Reveal the chaos inside.
I can't fit the poems
To the squares.
A graph can't really cry
The way a person can.
There's a losing feeling
Etched in pen
On a harshly graded
Parcel of mathematical quizzing
That a poem has no place to
Instill in me.

And no one would
Be able to read my work
The way they tell you to show it.
My poems have no color coding.
Definition between data
Becomes hazy as
Layers of black are added
In empty,
All encompassing anger.
And I smoke while I write tonight,
Haze growing,
Lines wobbled,
And I may have put a poem
On a piece of graph paper
But it's nothing like the math homework
That stays in my backpack.
Needless to say, I wrote this on graph paper.
Olivia McCann
Written by
Olivia McCann
3.4k
   ---, Devon Webb and Raiyaan Mahbub
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