You are likely to find yourself somewhere in the line breaks if you pay attention.
I turned on the sink
when I went to take a shower.
Put a spoon in the microwave
for five seconds at full power.
As a child I had ambition, wide eyes and a fearless vision.
Now sitting in my kitchen as the microwave smokes I’m thinking maybe,
I need a change of pace.
A walk instead of a run, sunglasses instead of sun.
Because somewhere, I forgot that we all get overdone.
I’ve driven 11 thousand miles,
in two hundred and ten-ish days,
and all I’ve learned is the homesickness sets in
as soon as the radio presets
fill with static.
They say I have this thing,
some sort of way with words.
But is another grand of miles the cost of a lonely word filled heart?
Forgive me father,
for I have skinned
my knee.
I tripped while leaving a reading tonight, and now I sit
in blood soaked torn up dirty jeans.
I may not understand your religion,
but I’ve heard you have
an honest way
with words.
So I ask you be the first.
Teach me how to fail
please, just criticize my work.
That, has nothing and everything to do with your class.
I’m sorry I’m not paying attention,
but there are matters at hand that I must attend to amend the bends
and folds bursting out of my mind,
making matters miserable for me sitting here
peacefully, quietly.
Blood pumping, veins throbbing,
creativity robbing me of the educational material
you desire burns forest fires over my notebooks.
Khaki clad lectures and suede serenades of study
just don’t fit in these pages
while I itch with irrational grammatical fears and anxieties.
Commas and semicolons haunt my daydreams and
white space suffocates until I awake and shake with
inspiration.
Adoration.
An overactive imagination that my pen fails to control, falls to the floor,
and catches your attention that I’m not looking at the board.
You ask me what is written and
I am shyly smitten that you have some interest in my art.
Margins somewhat peek at the subject that you speak but the ants beneath my feet tell me to retreat to the corners on my mind and give a clean sweep onto the page.
Do not be enraged that I am not engaged, my minds just setting the stage for my pen to be more than lifeless and grey.
So I suppose all I can say, is yes, I am taking notes.
But no, they have nothing —yet everything— to do with this class.
