I’ve been reading many self-help books

lately

I guess, I need help.

I look at my co-workers—

they definitely need help.

They look at me

with sour faces.

I say the right things

at the wrong times.

The principal talks about how to craft an email to build trust—

how not to use trigger words

how to be politically correct.

“Can you build trust with an email?” I asked.

He didn’t know what to say.

I have always said what’s different

and that’s why I’m a poet,

I guess.

I’m tempted

by glory

but my way, is actually a lonely by-way

along the freeway

of humanity.

I don’t want to live under the bridge

but my kind

usually does.

My brother-in-law

is a lot like me—always reading books

but believing them.

The difference is

I don’t.

The more knowledge I listen to

the more convinced I am

that nobody knows anything.

Why should I care

what they say?

You know when something has the power to change You

when you can’t stop reading it.

How many books have I put down, like a lost cause?

Eventually, snowflakes

get lost

in the blizzard that blinds you.

Beauty is in the simple small things

Not in heaps

of brown snow

along the freeway.