I believe in myths.

Every naturel blonde was first someone else.  By that I mean, she was known as Norma Jean, maybe Katy, in high school (see reincarnation below).

My teenage glory days, when I was the king of cool,
will revisit when I am 75 years old, the man-in-demand (wink), wearing his lucky wide cord corduroys and letting my man-bun,
all the way down, at the prom in the senior citizen home, getting lucky, say once a month...

God, yup, after all, he/she cometh to me regular-like,
when he needs a poet~father to take his confession,
and pays me most excellently for refusing him forgiveness,
with the most excellent poem suggestions or lesser valuable things.

Love at first sight, of course, happens to me all the time,
twenty, thirty times when I am walking home.  I tell ya, it's exhausting, the stress of living in the big city

Not only will I win the lottery someday,
will take down both,  Powerball and MegaMillions,
in the very same week the odds for which
there ain't enough zeroes in HP's servers. (See God, above).

Reincarnation. One time they Hale(d) and then hanged me (my "namesake") and I said: " I only regret, that I have but one life to lose for my country."  Well, the selfies all show oh-boy-o-boy, was I ever grinning and winking.

Only boys are bullies, girls get off easy, by getting called
just mean.

One day my city's teams will win the World Series, the Stanley Cup, the NBA Finals and the Superbowl all in the same year but only after I die and me, well, only after they will have buried me in Wyoming or France, just for spite, and nobody will hear me screaming.

My children will speak fondly of me even after they find out I died broke, well maybe not fondly, but they will most definitely call out my name, regularly.

After my demise, all the typoes in my poems will magically disappear.

All these good things will come to fruition, because I am a believer, and walked the humble path. The autopsy will also show that my tongue was permanently stuck to my cheek.

Dear Daddy,
Do you know what these men say to me?

With their
eyes and their mouths
when I walk on the street.

With a grin and a nod
and a look up and down.
A wink and a kiss
and a cat call heard from downtown.

With my skirt short
and my top
low,
It’s a cold world daddy
and no
doesn’t mean no.

Daddy do you know
how these men look at me?

Like I’m a piece of meat
strutting down the street?
With my head buds in
and my favorite song on.

I’m asking for it Daddy,
I’m in the wrong.

Do you know how it feels
not to wear what I like?

To walk a little faster
when I’m alone at night?

Daddy the world is my predator
and I am it's doe,
Daddy what happens
when I can’t say no?

You're my north star
when I'm lost in sea of words.

Two sixes, a four
three dice,
you want more?


Cards?
it's a marked deck
you can check if you like
I did.

We gamble on until
it's all gone,
some
gamble some more

two sixes, a four
three dice,
you want more?

There’s a certain disharmony in the way of things,
and how it turns humans into monsters. I saw a monster turn a girl
into a woman with her clothes on the floor,

and he carved ‘liar’ on her chapped lips. I reached out when
she stood before me, holding a razor in one hand and whiskey
in the other. She had dashed lines on her wrists

and shattered glass at her feet. I feel like screaming, but my gums bleed
from a mouth full of broken metal wire.
I cannot tell you the story that sits on my shoulders like a child,
too young to understand the weight of himself.

Now my eyelids have been peeled from my face and
I cannot look away from the girl when she comes home after school
and asks me for help with her homework
because the least I can do is solve a few math problems.

step number one: read the book wintergirls.
tuck away every detail like you're cramming for a test.
dog-ear the pages and carry it with you like a travel guide.
decide that with your fingers and toes always icy cold for as long as you can remember,
you were destined to be a wintergirl.
reread it periodically, for inspirational purposes.

step two: download the myfitnesspal app.
use it to track every calorie you put into your body.
memorize that an oreo has seventy calories, an apple has one hundred, a cup of hot chocolate has eighty,
a bagel has two hundred seventy (a number that terrifies you),
and on and on and on.
let numbers float behind your eyes just before you go to bed,
and let them stay there as you throw off the covers to do guilty pushups and situps in your room
for twenty minutes (burning one hundred and twenty calories).
ignore the warnings shouted at you in red text
when you eat less than twelve hundred calories per day.
look at the projections it gives you for five weeks from now
with weights that seem both too small and too large at the same time.
when your net for the day hits the negatives after weeks of trying,
feel the slightest pang of satisfaction.

step three: find your "thinspiration".
make a tumblr just to look at pictures of jutting-out spines and thigh gaps and ribs.
hold your phone up next to your reflection in the mirror
and pick out everywhere your body differs from hers.
when the girls on the fitness blogs start looking too heavy for your goal,
find the eating-disorder blogs.
obsess over their bodies almost as much as you obsess over yours,
but not quite as much.

step four: begin losing weight.
imagine yourself floating away, feather-light.
imagine yourself becoming skin and bones.
imagine this as you drag your heavy body from class to class,
as your muscles waste from malnutrition.
imagine this as you have to clean your hairbrush out
three times while you work tangles from your hair.
imagine this as you snap at anyone and everyone,
as you spend hours locked in your room.

step five: become a poet and write about yourself.
romanticize your own demons, just by calling them demons.
use as many metaphors as you can,
to avoid the harsh language of the truth.
and especially avoid writing about the crippling guilt
that hits you when you eat too much,
you're fat you're worthless you'll never be anything,
and hits you when you don't eat enough,
what's wrong with you how did you let it get to this point
voices in your head never abating.
avoid writing about your lack of motivation and constant exhaustion and always,
always, use words that imply mystery.
describe your mind as foggy, call your body diminishing.
never say it how it is, because you could convince yourself to quit.
never say that it's torture and you're in pain
and you just wish you were eight again, never considering this path.
never say that you need help but you don't want help.

if you have the urge to say these things,
say only that this disorder is not one you would willingly give up,
because you finally have something to control.
because it is the truth,
but it is also the romanticized truth.

Did you hear the that goes
“Everytime I try to make a **** joke,
It just comes out a little too…
Forced.”

Did you hear the one about
The girl who had to pull her
Best friend
Drunk, crying, and vomiting,
From her best friend’s car?

They’re both pretty funny,
Aren’t they?

It’s hilarious that
A 15 year old girl
Sits in a clinic,
Waiting to see
If she is pregnant
Or if maybe she has
An STD.
She feels ***** and
Ashamed,
Feeling like it’s her fault
Because that’s what
Society tells her-
It’s her fault because
Of what she was wearing.

It’s even more funny that
She sits there alone,
Because she’s too
Ashamed to ask for help.

It’s hilarious that a
Little boy,
With tears streaming down his face,
Thinks that what she did to him
Wasn’t ****,
Because society tells him
That real men can’t be *****,
He should’ve liked it,
That he’s lucky because
She was good looking.

It’s hilarious that when you make **** jokes,
You’re almost as bad as the ******.

You’re normalizing his actions,
Making him feel proud,
And that what he did
Is just a process of life,
That what he did is normal.

So instead of asking me why I don’t find **** jokes funny,
Let me ask you
Why you do.