I barely went to school
And was baptized underneath a rain gutter
But I promise
Despite my upbringing
I will die a poet

Birds never studied music
Nature never rough drafted its deformations
Including me
I was born perfectly broken
With heart in throat
And head in clouds
And head in ****

And head

Head everywhere else but center
Hands anywhere but to myself

I dare you to stop pumping fuel
Into my mouth’s motor
Dare you to make fun of me
For my special education
For my short bus
******
My education was special

I learned to walk on two feet
When I should have had four
And I learned
How to stop myself from crying
When I found out not everyone is going to love me

I’ve learned the language
Of your laughter
And can translate your sighs
To mean anything
Right now they are the exhalation of ghosts
You no longer wish to hold on to

Let them go
Let go of your ghosts
And don’t settle for anything less
Than the silence of your soul
As it leaves you
Take this poem with you when you do
It is a love note
Sending Saint Peter home

All are welcome here

Especially you

I mean
Nobody’s perfect
Especially poets
I’m not perfect
Which is perfect
Because that means
I can die
A poet

I know I aint much for looks
And you might not disagree when I say
Statues have more substance than this
I know I can’t Stendhal you to a standstill
It doesn’t mean that I can’t make you breathless
Like when I make you laugh

There is so much beauty in your laughter
That while you are wiping tears out of your eyes
Doubled over like you were trying to find your breath on the floor
I forget that I don’t like the way I look when I smile
And I smile

I know the math of aesthetics is lost on me
But you can save your symmetry
For building blocks and butterflies

Bad habits
Scars
And an awkward affinity for lopsidedness
Made me

Come

Balance me out

Because so often I feel like a fat kid
Sitting on a seesaw
Alone

Or a ******
Trying on different sizes of life
In carnival mirrors

Or a Greek artist
Who has chiseled all the wrong parts
To perfection
Before he understood realism

Realism
Is a twin sized bed at 3 am
After the cold seeps through the window pane
It is cobwebs stained black from a house fire
Before
I never realized we had that many
It is a vanity
Reminding me how not to be vain
Unless you mean this poem
This poem is vain

Realism
Is this
It is me
And it is you
Perfectly human
And nowhere near beautiful
Unless beauty is symmetry
And symmetry is when you balance me out
By being the other fat kid on the seesaw
Or the person who makes normal mirrors
So I can see what I look like in my own skin
Not perfect
But that doesn’t mean I don’t have ways
Of making you breathless

Come

Let me make you laugh again
Let me make you breathless

Your heartbreak is as cozy
As the fishbowl I still get dizzy in
After you took me off the back burner
And placed me on the counter to cool
I have to remind myself that
It is not an earthquake when you
Slam the kitchen cabinets
Even though
My world shakes

The thing about fish is
If you don’t put a lid on their bowls
They tend to jump out
Not that it is an attempt at suicide
Just that some of us were born
Without the capacity to understand
Our own limitations
Don’t tell me I can’t breathe on dry land
*******
I am a man
Which means I am too dumb to understand that
Unless I try

How am I supposed to know
That I can’t protect you from everything
Unless I try

How am I supposed to know
That I can’t love you forever
Unless I try

How am I
supposed to know
That duct tape
can’t hold everything together
Unless I try

How was I supposed to know
That we would eventually be
Nothing but gasps of air
On a damp cutting board
When the lashings of love
Have denatured the thickest parts of our skin

Maybe I don’t know how to fix everything
Or love you like a normal person
Maybe saying every thought I have out loud
Makes you uncomfortable
It makes me uncomfortable
My face isn’t always this red
My skin isn’t always this hot
I am not always this dumb

But I am a man *******
And maybe I just
Haven’t learned that yet

I am pretty sure I should have been born a bug
These eyes have never been good for believing
But these hands
Stretch out like antennae
And will hold heartbeats till people make sense

I have never met a lap that didn’t look comfy
Or shoulders too bony to rest my head on
I have never met a bear
That I didn’t want to hug me

I am so much one man sized
Invasion of privacy
That I hand out **** whistles on first dates
Not that I’d **** anybody
I just need a painful reminder
Of appropriate distance
Even though
Distance is painful

I mean
I get lonely sometimes
And if you invite me to bed
And don’t ask me for ***
I will skip straight to the cuddles
Till we sweat salty *** puddles

I mean
Goosebumps is the human kinda Braille
For hold me
I know that
Because
I can read your skin with my fingertips
Every chill
Every pock mark
And scar
Has a translation

And If I were a louse
Or a flea
Or a lone cricket
Chirping cuddle-bug morse code
In the silence of your naptime
I’d take the time
To translate the language of your body

All you have to do
Is hold me

Every word I have ever written
Has been some sad attempt to make you love me
I can’t hide my flaws behind walls of words
These black ink blemishes
Are like smears of blood
When you thought bleach would actually clear the crime scene

Not even the smoky morning rasp
Of my voice
When my spoken word sounds best
Stays steady
No
My brave voice breaks
In the same way my thoughts wander

They take me places
But I will always come back to you

Until you love me
I am showing what’s behind my wordy walls now
Before it is too late

Because years from now
After I have finally convinced you to love me
And I become a ******* again
Because I know you will love me
No matter what

Please leave me
And take all this poetry when you do
Because believe it or not
Everything I have ever written
Has always been for you

I know there are days
Where this depression gets so strong
It feels like gravity is making up for
All the times it accidentally let you fly
And after pouring yourself a bowl of cold cereal
The weight of the spoon as it goes to your mouth
Stretches time infinite

So you don’t eat
Hoping gravity will let you go
You let yourself go
Let it all go

You and I are characterized by deep breaths
And bad timing
Sick jokes
And a mouth so *****
You have to bite your tongue at times
To keep the flies out

Perfect is unattainable
Just try to be good
Do it for me
No one ever hated a man
Who kept his heart in the right place
Out of his chest
And on a mantle
Away from dust
In between
Bibles and poetry
Coloring books
And old *******

You might not care to be good
But you can’t be complete until you are

I wouldn’t be telling you this
Unless I knew that
Unless I knew what you would become
After making some of the hardest decisions in life
Like making it a point to stay alive

Stay alive
Be good
I love you
And trust me
In the end
You will be so happy

Signed
An ******* from the future

It is grey and snowy here
And I kinda miss the sun
She said

Woman
I am wishing you the warmth only a lover can offer
Via breathy nothings into your ear

Fills you like a balloon
And stands you so still
That your shadow on the snow
Looks more like a stain

I know you
Like the snowy backdrop of my foggy thoughts
When poetry is all that is left
To know who we are
And what we’ve become

It is us trapped in the porcelain distance
Between scalding hot coffee
And your shaking palm

So this is me
Wishing you warmth
And love
And burning belly cinderblock butterflies
The kind that don’t make you tremble
Just settle
Into the comfiest spot you know

Still cold?
I didn’t think so