I'd like to take conformity
In all of its enormity
And brand it a deformity,
                                               of our failed society,
                                               and all its impropriety.

You think that I am senseless,
Want me to feel defenseless,
But me, I am relentless

                                               In pursuing flawed perfection.

I like being an outcast,
For it means my name will outlast
Every other I have surpassed

                                               In glorious insanity

                                               I'm loving my depravity!

Your opinion never mattered,
I ignored it as you chattered
Of my flaws, and never flattered

                                               ~*My individuality*~

I am blood, and skin, and bone,
The rest of you are simply clones,
Robots, with no minds of your own

                                               I represent (true) humanity

I am the art and the artist
The music and the instrument
I am life, I am love
I am ME</u></i>.

You laugh because I'm different....
                                                      I laugh 'cause you're all the same.

Summa cum laude He repeats, wagging a finger in my face as though the phrase is supposed to mean something to me. I twist my lips in annoyance; I don't need my Latin dictionary to tell me what he's trying to imply. That even though he may have graduated from college himself with highest honors, he knows that I'll never be able to follow that same path. I'm not cut out for the whole "bust-your-ass-studying-stuff-you'll-never-use-again," like he is, and I resent him for it. I'll never be as good at you at biology and physics, I tell him, so stop trying to make me. He laughs and ruffles my hair (which I hate) and tells me not to worry; he'll still love me even when my first six novels fail miserably, and I spend the first twenty years of my adult life trying to choose between electricity or running water and eating packaged ramen six nights a week. And of course, I'm forced to correct him; me, writing six novels? If I've spent the past four years writing one, how does he expect me to spend twenty years writing six? You're crazy, old man. I sigh, shaking my head, and he laughs and throws an arm around me, saying something about knowing now where I got my own insanity from.

I refer to my dad as "Puff" a lot of the time, because when he smokes, I like to pester him until he lets the smoke out of his nostrils in true Magic Dragon-style. I'm allergic to cigarette smoke, and despite what's written on the packet, his pipeweed does not smell like cherries, but I still enjoy pushing stuff off his desk and settling myself on it when he's working, singing "Puff the Magic Dragon" until he starts blowing the smoke at me. I take that as my cue to leave: I would die for my dad in a heartbeat, but if he's the one killing himself, then why should I go down with him? I told him that once, a couple of years back, but he just retaliated by asking me why the hell I had barged in on him in the first place, and would I leave the grown-up decisions to the grown-ups and go write a poem or something. I haven't complained about the smoke since then, but I still refuse to hug him when he comes over reeking of Davidoff Zino Cigarillos.

My dad's official job title is Dentist, but I believe that he is more so many things than a guy that just plants teeth. My dad is an artist, a philosopher, a wiseass, and yes, sometimes, a tenor vocalist. It's really both a beautiful and horrible thing to hear him sing; you can't help but admire his courage to go around belting out Pavarotti in public, but it tends to get slightly embarrassing when he makes it sound like Pavarotti's music was inspired by the sounds of a heifer in labor. But I take what I can get; at least he's stopped doing Mariah Carey..._{in public...}

He has a habit of using his hands a lot when he speaks, and clucking his tongue at the end of almost every sentence. So I think it's probably a given that I've started to do them both myself. (Insert tongue-cluck here) He loves to laugh, tossing his head back in genuine amusement, mouth hanging wide open to display all the silver crowns I feel shame him as a dentist. He loves to laugh, but never smiles for pictures unless it is a genuine accident. Taking pictures of him, I feel like a mother coaxing a child into getting a shot at the doctor's office; both ways there is nothing but flat-out refusal unless there is a trick or a treat involved. So I tricked him into laughing last time he got his passport picture taken; I told him I got an acceptance to an Ivy League University. I was grateful that at least the photographer managed to take the photo before he fell off the bench. I don't think he would have laughed that hard a second time. I love staring at his passport now; the picture is so much more him than the stern, mirthless zombie staring back at me from the old one. In this picture, you can practically see him breathing, so fresh and full of life. Now I just have to figure out what joke to tell him next time. I like seeing him cringe every time he has to open his passport.

Someone once told me that If I were to grow a beard and get a pair of glasses, they wouldn't be able to tell me and my dad apart. I found this ridiculous until I tried his glasses on and looked into my bathroom mirror. For half a second, my dad was the one looking back, smirking a little at my childish idiocy. It was only a second, but the memory has been etched into my brain ever since. Since then I've taken his glasses a thousand times and tried them on in various mirrors, and every single time I see his face flash in the second it takes my eyes to focus properly on the reflection. I think about how much alike we are personality-wise and shudder; were both madly stubborn, usually lazy, and subtly brilliant. It makes me wonder if I'll end up marrying a man with my mother's gentle disposition and cleaning-obsessed nature. Those are the kinds of thoughts that make me throw the glasses back onto his dresser in terror and try to calm myself down with a few episodes of Bleach and Kuroshitsuji.

There aren't a lot of dads that let their fat, spoiled teenage daughters clamber onto their laps and start counting their white hairs, or drive halfway across San Diego to find the only Sam Goody's in town that stocks Renji plushies, but my Puff is one of them. Sure, he still sounds like a laboring cow when he sings, and maybe he still musses my hair all the time though I've told him a zillion times that I hate that, but that's beside the point. Any man who can have lived with me for the past eighteen years and still be proud to claim me as his own must be a spectacular human being, and for that, Puff, I salute you. So thanks and all that, blah blah blah, you're the greatest, I'm just going to stop before this gets too cheesy to swallow.

And by the way, on that seventh day when I'm not eating ramen in my crappy studio apartment with no running water (I need to have light to write my six novels, no?) I'll be over at the Big House with my husband and starving kids, and I'll be expecting those jacket potatoes you make so well. And I'll still be a vegetarian, so make sure there's something with tofu in in, okay? Thanks.

A bitten lip,
A swollen tongue
Bruised gums,
And a broken soul.

Kissed to death
Brought to life
Sweating and shaking
Panting and weeping
Asking for less
But begging for more.

I feel like a whore.

And nobody matters.

Mine is a road
Built upon favors
And failures, and bribes
And hopes, and lollipops
And rainbows, and serial killers
And dreamers, and classics
And elephants, and ponies
And love
And rejection
And bliss.

Dolphins cannot breathe underwater,
They surface for air
When their lungs grow weary,
And pigs have no wings
Except in their dreams
And a match will burn the roof of your mouth
If you try to kiss its flame,
Having fallen in love with its sheer beauty
Despite its danger.

Swallow the ashes;
They taste less bitter
Than hopelessness
Which soon
You shall have so much of
That the taste of ashes
Will remind you
Of the lollipops you ate
So long ago
While building
The road
You walk on.