You eat a lot of things from tuber ware containers with a ***** fork
you haven't washed in weeks.
You pile mounds of ketchup on anything
literally everything you eat,
and you hold your utensils like a sandbox shovel
just stuffing the food in your mouth, filling your cheeks like a chipmunk,
yet somehow you still think you have the ability to talk.
You wash everything down with beer.
One kind of beer- nothing else.
I always ask for a sip and you just pull it away while pulling me in.
Your lips are warm and taste like venison, and the yellow light
of the kitchen makes your complexion look a little off
but your eyes are bluer than they've ever been.
You should see yourself stand there at the counter
trying to tell me some story I can't understand about what happened to you that day,
or that night, or maybe it was last week.
Your timeline's never been quite accurate, your memory skewed.
Sometimes I'll look at you in moments like this and mumble, "you're so ******* weird"
but truth is I love all the things you do.

It's bits like this that I miss when you're not there.
Like how you sleep with your elbows under the pillow, snoring so loud
I can't hear myself dreaming.
How you think just because you've memorized every movie ever
that means I have too,
and why it is I just laugh when you quote something I've never seen.
Especially, those times you look at me with this quizzical look
a great idea just sitting on your tongue, expecting something
when really it's just some silly thing you've thought about all day
just didn't know how to say.
I tell you constantly that I can't stand how you wait until the very last clean shirt
before you do the laundry,
how those loads and loads are a ***** to fold
but truth is I love how worn everything is.
I even love the way you sing in the shower, or in the car, or in after dark, or all the time.
I love the way you moan as the sunlight peaks through the window in the morning.
I love when you rustle up my hair after I just did it.
I love how you smear my make-up.
I love you all the time, when you're smart, a *******, rude.
And even though I'll say 100 times in a day that you drive me crazy.
I love all the things you do.

Some guy's picture on the inside of a book sleeve
told me that he could help me write something other
than the worthless crap I'd been spewing for the past couple months.
Takes ten steps-
normal stuff
like
1. Clear your mind (which means you have to have a mind to begin with).
2. Don't be afraid
3.
4.
5.
Poetry is like this.. writing a poem is like that..

6. Pick a subject that means something

I mean all the real stuff you need to know
you should know by now, right?
Well I didn't **** anyone. My innocence didn't die when I was fifteen.
In fact, I still pretend two water drops are racing each other
when the fall down my car window-
and like a real contest I take bets.
I bet on a lot of things
like how long it will take me to get to the point-
the point
so how am I supposed to write beautifully about tragic things
I never experienced?
Worst thing that happened to me this week
was I put too much mayonnaise on my sandwich, making it mushy
and no one wants to read about that.

So the book then tells me, once I've scraped tediously through chapter 7,
that I should use bizarre words in real conversations
to spark my "withheld creativity"
because I'm "too scared" to let it show.
Here's a tip the book doesn't tell you-
don't ask your two best friends for help
because they'll come up with things like
"sparkling parachute pants"
or even "scented paraffin"
and who the hell knows what a paraffin is.
Then they'll start calling themselves your "muse"
and you'll never hear the end of it.
But they'll buy you drinks to make you feel better about
how ****** you feel and the ten blank word documents you have at home.
So I guess you probably should ask your friends after all.

Chapter 10 is when it gets really weird,
because it starts wondering which side of the brain writes what-
telling me to start writing things with my left hand
because it's "neurologically different" then what your right hand would do.
But last time I checked, I didn't write poetry with my right hand
because it surged some hidden message onto the page.
I did it because I'm right handed.
I advise you just completely skip chapter 10
unless you're a shrink and need some Sunday pleasure reading.

The final chapter becomes really inspirational-
reminding my tired heart how much originality I possess
and there's still lyrical words "hidden up my sleeve."
(they use a lot of clichés like that).
It will tell you how every great writer has been there.
How they all started just like you.
How "hero's get remembered, but legends never die"
Wait sorry, that's something else.
See what these books will do to you?
They'll make you crazy
you'll start drinking things like chai tea and reading soap opera magazines.
You'll stop going to the bathroom entirely-
and they'll tell you to do stupid **** like that
because they understand that right now
you're so desperate to write something
ANYTHING
that you'll start romancing about the stuffed animal in the corner
or the piece of lint you just know is under your bed.
Before you know it you'll start listening to Norah Jones on the weekends,
not shaving,
wearing glasses
snapping
the whole bit,
because that's how empty you feel
because writing
is like breathing
and when you stop writing
you stop breathing-
it's that easy.

But I advise you to finish the book.
It'll be worth it.
However, you won't start writing a **** thing
until you laugh at all the prose sections in a book
meant to tell you how to write poetry,
but here's the secret they don't tell you.
No one can tell you how to write poetry.
You just have to do it.
You just have to **** for a good while before you start writing
something better than "seasons farewell" or the other Robert Frost snippets
you've been scratching on pages lately.

What I learned
after 398 pages of poorly constructed criticism and self help
is that the reason you aren't writing
isn't because you're scared you won't get published
you can't pick a subject
or you don't have any time.
"Don't try to dissect the moment, or it'll be gone."
The reason you can't write right now
is because you won't let yourself ****.
Be bad, have a beer, and eat a lot
it'll make you feel better
than writing something flawless the first time through.

I mean you already know everything you need to know by now.
So just write
and **** at it-
it'll be worth it.
Trust me.

I knocked my knee on the rod under the table.
I put a runner in my tights.
I licked my finger to wash the wound clean.
It stung for only a second.
Then it was as if it never happened.
The ditsy waitress with the blonde bun and bubblegum
was annoying me with the way she wouldn't pick up her feet.
She had a stupid Chinese tattoo on her wrist,
and like most of the world
she thought she could use a band aid as a cover up,
but nothing that obvious stays hidden that long
without being noticed.
And to top it all off, they burnt my tuna melt.

I got weird looks from people who passed,
catching the 50 Shades of Grey title on my book,
disgusted and pondering why
I would ever hold it up in a family restaurant.
The black man was eyeing me up in the corner.
The lady with the pink lipstick in her teeth thought I was erratic and disturbed.
The businessman thought it was merely for attention,
Well
jokes on them,
I did it just to **** them off.

That's when I looked over at you,
You were eating breakfast and a ****** cup of coffee.
It was 4 in the afternoon.
I could see your Captain America underpants
creeping out of your jeans without a belt.
I could see your eyes judging the newspaper headlines.
You seemed almost as unhappy as me.

So I went over and asked if you dropped the pen
I found in my pocket,
and when you didn't even look up at me to respond
I told you it was just a poor excuse to talk to you.
"I respect that,"
you said between bites of your omelet.
You glanced up at me for only a moment,
blue eyes, **** chin
probably expecting me to leave after the prolonged silence,
but I sat there unchanged,
I don't really pick up on social cues.

"You're pretty hot."
I guess neither do you.
I smiled something creepy, because I don't do it that often,
You didn't seem to mind.
Within two minutes you had me laughing,
saying stuff too loud,
and it was the first time
that I think I actually saw myself,
and I don't really even know you
but somehow, insanely
it feels like I already do.

You almost kissed me,
and you shouldn't have.
On the gingham tablecloth in the yellow light,
you lifted me from the counter top onto my feet
putting your hat on my head and tickling my ribs.
You know it's my sweet spot,
leads straight to my heart if you're gentle enough.
I told you to stop and you walked away,
eyes lingering on my bare skin between where my top ended on my waist
and where my dark denim jeans began to hug my hips.
I flipped my hair back around, joining in some conversation too late
between a girl drunk on grape juice and a wedding crasher straggler
in a forest green flannel with camel cigarettes in the pocket.
That's when you came back over and started yelling
some story that happened to you the night before.
You told it well,
the circle captivated, me mesmerized
by how blue your eyes stayed all this time without me noticing.
You  had the whole room laughing with your wit and stupid vernacular,
but I was smiling because you looked so beautiful in those drunken
honest moments
where I recognized the person beneath the banter
where I saw you.
I was saying my goodbyes to the carhartt boys and their one night girls
when you grabbed me by the hand and spun me around
like we were dancing,
pulled me in by your hand pressed on my shoulder blades
the other around my waist
I gasped as your lips almost touched mine,
but then you looked down at me
with those same blue eyes
and took a deep breath,
slowly letting your hands glide down my back then to your sides.
I just stared back at you,
wishing you'd forget the logic and put your hands back where they were,
tracing your lips with that almost kiss,
and I could feel how much you wanted to be in this moment
desperately searching for a way to my lips
but something stopped us.
And I think it was because we knew it would only lead to something messier
than where we were at
it would be a backwards romance, reversing our ***** footsteps
in something we've tried and tried to understand
that it never works out the way either of us plans.
We were both doing so well, moving on
but in that moment we almost gave all that strength up
gave into something too tempting and too wrong.
Because we can't really stay away from each other all that long.
I mean,
you almost kissed me
and you shouldn't have,
but I swear
I wish you would have.

Ignorance
is beautiful
when it's strung together with metal links
and hung like chains in the candlelight
so the world can see it glisten on the sour part
at just the right time.
My body,
liked to **** up that ignorance
late at night when the moonlight uncovered my hidden despair,
my secret wish that you could be mine,
so that I could pretend like it still didn't hurt that much,
like it still wasn't painful to open my eyes
when the sun came up.

When my future became blurry,
I found clarity in the comfort of the past
because truth is,
I knew it well.
So I opened the lock on the wrecking ball cabinet,
let it explode all over my life
burnt out all the flame remnants
with my fingers,
numb.
I let myself love this stencil someone
of everything I told myself I'd never give excuses to
no more,
because that was easier,
pure ignorance was more painless
than admitting
I still needed you,
after all these days.

I mean,
how is it we continue to want those that break us apart?
And why is it we can erasing the memories, tearing and tugging the stitches
but people still remain in our hearts?
I mean,
how is it after this complicated translation
I still want back to you,
I still want
you.

It didn't make sense to me,
and I cruelly didn't want it to make sense to you.
So I fragmentaly kept it covered in my safety guard,
my ignorance
because that's easier than sinking into innocence,
calling out help, tracing out apologies on your skin,
begging you to believe that trust is more than just
some cacophony I've prepared in the back of my soul.
It's easier than trying to get you to believe in me again.

I didn't want to admit that I needed you,
but I do.

Ignorance
is beautiful

when it's strung together with metal links
and hung like chains in the candlelight
so the world can see it glisten on the sour part
at just the right time.

I grew up in the same house, same town, same place
my entire life.
Big brick house with a cinnamon smelling winter and lavender summer,
tiny garden around the corner edge filled with baby red tomatoes and daddy's carrots.
I used to splash around in the puddles the cracks in our sidewalk made
after a huge storm until mommy yelled for getting my dress all muddy.
Always warm, filled with fire, hope, and being together
with someone known that one is never going to lose.
I used to fit behind the sofa in the living room during hide and seek,
but then I grew too big and everyone started to find me-
no more secrets.
I grew up in the comfortable security of a real home,
consistent with the idea of family and love behind circumstance.

Then I met you,
shaggy hair, grey sweatshirt innocence
with loose jeans and a smile that felt safe when directed at me.
You took me,
to your fourth house by now,
after some time.
I walked in to the aroma of wet dirt mixed with grass and beer,
cigarette smoke smells sunk deep into the brown couch
with puffy yellow stuffing popping out of the seams.
Wood walls left uncovered, rusty nails sticking out
living underneath the minimal television light.
I could hear your dad outside chopping word,
his wife coughing over the sound of doing the dishes
and whatever program she wasn't pretending to listen to.
You told me you used to stick your clothing tags underneath the coffee table,
but you had to leave it behind when you moved.
There's a stain on the carpet and dog hair stuck on my jeans.
You told me you used to collect bottle caps from holes you dug in the ground,
until your dad told you to fill them all back up
as quickly as you could.
It was cold in there, but someone
I felt warm.
And I realized that no matter where I was,
if I was laying in your strong arms wrapped around me
pool blue eyes tracing my smile when I laughed,
then I was home.
I had something to crash into after the disaster of the day,
complaining about things that don't really matter
until you shut me up the way you know I love you to.

I realized,
the pencil height measure walls, the hush-hush closet hideouts
aren't what makes it feel like home.
The *** and pan rock bands, the albums on the shelf
don't really matter,
if you have no one to call your own.
You
are my home.
Somewhere I feel safe, secure, never left alone.
Somewhere with you,
even if the future is left unknown
if I'm in your arms,
I know I'm home.