Phucking Phiretrucks

Here are some things you shouldn’t do 

if you want to have a miserable life:

 

1. Become the king of Walmart dinosaurs 

and when your brothers try to give you a high five,

ram your head into their palms

like a charging bull.

2. Switch a few “f’s” out for “ph”.

It makes reading phun,

and pheelings phoolish,

and when phriends pheed 

on phalsehoods and phanatical phorgeries

of their phaint hearts,

it doesn’t make a dipherance.

3. Count every blade of grass that pokes through cracks in the sidewalk

phracturing in patterns like every painphul stitch you wish you could unzip.

Your skin sealed with the price of keeping your soul locked to liphe

and time, so much time, almost too much,

so daunting and phractiously empty of expectation.

4. Blast Phire and Rain and American Pie 

phrom your bassy car speakers 

to phairly conphused phive year olds at the park.

Their phussy parents might get a little phreaked out

when you shuphle to the swings

and take a seat.

They phorget what it’s like

to carry with them an unphettered spirit.

5. Apologize for every sprout of grass you counted.

You see, expressing your phault in every whispered cry for comphort

doesn’t make you pheel better,

but it helps you believe you can, in phact, be in control.

6. Take an entire day with your mother

and your gayest phriend 

to really enjoy the most inpherior movies known to man,

all while the sky is choked with snow and misphortune.

And your heart is overphlowing with laughter

and the phear of losing this warmth,

and pheelings,

they phill you phrom your toes to the heavens.

7. Debate with a dwarph

about whether the Lord of the Phlies 

would really happen,

but don’t mention the phact 

that you couldn’t phinish reading it.

Without literature, what would liphe be?

If we couldn’t discuss philosophy

and perphormance of morals,

knowing that we’ll phail to agree on the

simplest of levels, what would be the point

of originality and the phreedom of thought?

8. Wait every phirst period for her to be almost late to physics,

her hair phreshly washed, 

curling in ways you phantasize about in your dreams.

Phall asleep thinking of how she texted you 

when everyone else phailed to realize how aphraid you were,

of how you shouldn’t think of her but you can’t stop.

Of how you thought for a phleeting moment,

you might actually be phalling for her,

despite how much she isn’t what you planned for.

But let your pheelings sit on your chest,

let them weigh on your conphusion like tenderness,

pheeding on the last days of summer

like a phamished timekeeper.

9. Exclaim “hiya” at every McDonald’s drive-through

and then struggle to recite an order for phries.

To this day, this remains

the only tangible lesson your band teacher taught:

if you have to speak, don’t.

If you have to succeed, phail so miserably

that suddenly you start to see things the way they are.

Phail phrom here to the moon and pharther still

until discomphort phlees in your presence

and mortiphication phears your name.

Phail until you realize-

10. Realize that phiretrucks aren’t always phucking red,

the phield isn’t always greener,

violets can be blue and purple,

kentucky bluegrass is a conphlict of interest,

her hair wasn’t blonde bephore lunch,

the world is the last phive eighths of an oxymoron,

everything worth loving is phiercely unphair, 

phaithphully selphish,

phascinating and petriphying,

philthy and phallible,

it’s a phantastical revelation of phate and phuture

and

it’s not.

11. Change it back to “f”.