No One Taught Me              how to Title Poems

No one taught me how to hunt, or fish, or shave

So that’s why I have a beard

No one taught me how to change a flat tire

So that’s why my car is so wobbly

No one taught me how to clean or use laundry machines

So that’s why I smell so stank

No one taught me manners

So that’s why you’ll find my elbows on the table

No one taught me how to cook

So that’s why I microwave dinners

No one taught me how to balance a checkbook

So that’s why my bank account stays in low cash mode

No one taught me to stand up for myself

So I guess that’s why I’m such a fucking slouch

No one taught me what to do with all the mad that I feel

So that’s why there’s a fist-sized hole in my living room wall

No one taught me how to play spades

So I only play solitaire

No one taught me how to play charades

But I've still been imitating and pretending

No one taught me how to chess

So that’s why I can only play checkers

No one taught me patience

So that’s why I just flipped the board over

No one taught me how to accept my vulnerability

So that’s why there’s an out-dated calendar covering the fist-sized hole in my living room wall

No one taught me how to win

So maybe that’s why I’m such a loser

No one taught me how to lose

So I think that’s why I drink

No one taught me how to drink

So that’s why I can’t stop

No one taught me how to admit I’d been traumatized let alone how to process it

I wasn’t taught to hold my grief so much as I was taught to barricade it

To cement it off; To dam it up

And to just keep building higher and higher no matter how much the floodwaters gathered

So please try to keep the perspective that whatever spills on to you is just the overflow