Cleaning House

The house is a wreck, but these blogs are too good. I'm sorry baby, I can't vacuum right now, these blogs are too good.

Our backyard looks like an I spy calendar.
Our house looks like a Where's Waldo book.
But this year's reveal was the greatest of all time,
The Muhammad Ali of Real Talk.
So I'm sorry baby, I can't wipe down the counters right now, these blogs are too good.

Besides, that's a woman's job anyway, right? Like painting your nails, keeping a journal, and poetry. 

This is me calling out every boy in the class (except a few).

Because for every Tom Iansek there was a Celeste, two Eleanors, a Carina, and a bunch of Roses and Janes. And don't get me started on the Cornelias in the class.

James McKay fooled us all and the best boy in the class was some chick named Alice.

Maybe girls are better writers than boys. (Granted there are more girls in the class and there aren't any ladies on the football team and it's hard to hear from the back row.)

But I guess we just don't live in a world where it's cool for boys to like poetry.

I don't blame you. I would've been the same way in high school.

But now I'm different. It's probably because I was raised by girls, I don't know.

Some of you say: well, I'm just not a good writer. 

The fact that I am speaking this into my iPad instead of typing it sums up everything. Writing is not writing, it's just thinking. And if you were a tourist in writing, you were a tourist in thought.

And Trey said he's in jail because he was too big of a coward to express himself.

So to the boys who could do it: thank you. They probably won't let you sit by the knight, but you probably don't care anyway.

Anyway. This post is for everyone, not just the boys who won't read this. 

Thank you for creating such a positive community on these blogs. You read each other's work, you commented, and you built each other up. And you got no credit for it.

There were too many blogs, though. Too many blogs. Too many blogs. I missed so many of them. I missed so many top fives. My heart is overinflated from too many blogs.

There was so much you didn't learn this semester because there was so much I didn't teach.

Some of you have actually been to Paris
And I have the nerve to tell you what it's like
Some of you have lived there since seventh grade.

However,
Some of you have never been out of the state
And some of you will never leave.

[awkward silence while I think of how to end this]

Christmas came four days too early this year. Thank you for that.

This class is Christmas morning. But you don't get Christmas morning every morning. That's what makes it so special.  You still have to put up the lights and find a parking spot at Wal-mart on Black Friday. There are the awkward family parties and the ice melt you have to put on the driveway. Then you have to shovel the driveway and try to fit all those boxes into the recycling bin. And then you have to clean the house all over again. 

Your life is all of it,

it's Christmas morning and the ads on your Spotify Christmas playlist,

and this class was just one morning of your life.

Thanks to those who didn't sleep in.

Sincerely,
Kyle Nelson

ones and zeroes

Imagine a roomful of robots reading poetry to each other.

One gets up and shares an algorithm that makes every machine try to snap its fingers.

There's one about extension cords and one about endless data and one about zeroes and ones and ones and zeroes.

There's a lot of understanding but no tears or goosebumps or changes in temperature.

A hard drive may have overheated, but nobody got cold.

Robots don't get cold. 

I read two blogs tonight that dropped the temperature of my house:
her name was adleen
last thing, before you go

So go ahead without me, because I'm going to spend the rest of the night trying to figure this all out.

Let's spend the rest of our lives trying to figure this all out. 

No, please, keep studying for your science test and keep playing Trivia Crack until you have a winning record. Please. Keep putting your head down during Anis Mojgani's poetry and keep worrying about that ACT score. No, really, fire up Call of Duty or Pinterest or both and find anyway to escape this moment right now.

How can anyone blame you? Your dad gets mad whenever you turn up the heater.

Our lives are just someone else's Snapchat story and we'll never guess the password no matter how long we try.

I have a pile of 10th grade papers that I'm probably never going to grade.

I told my daughter I couldn't tell her a story tonight because we played Memory and watched Tangled and I guess somehow that felt like enough.

Even the ones who seem to have it all figured out somehow manage to do it wrong now and then.

I'll finish this blog post before 9 o'clock because I have to go play basketball and get my temperature back up again.

If you recognize this algorithm, then snap your fingers, snap your fingers, snap your fingers.