Having A Great Dad Probably

How Much Smaller The Large Places Are Once We're Grown Up, When We Have Car Keys And Credit Cards.

Even The Best Of Us Are At Least Part-time Bastards.

I'd Spent Way More Years Worrying About How To Look Like A Poet -- Buying Black Clothes, Smearing On Scarlet Lipstick, Languidly Draping Myself Over Thrift-store Furniture -- Than I Had Learning How To Assemble Words In Some Discernible Order.

But I'm Not Ready To Stop Listening To The Screwed-up Inner Voice That's Been Ordering Me Around For A Lifetime. My Head Thinks It Can Kill Me... And Go On Living Without Me.

In My Godless Household, Poems Were The Closest We Came To Sacred Speech -- The Only Prayers Said.