This is a story about my brief venture into the world of poetry.

It was just before Valentines Day and I was in eighth grade. In anticipation of the upcoming holiday, my English teacher decided it was time for a contest. Everyone in her classes was expected to write a romantic love poem. At the time, it seemed absurd because who wants to write about that stupid stuff? Looking back, it seems maybe even more absurd because in what bizarre world does a teacher think that her student’s time is best spent venturing into poetry to express a sentiment that could not be more foreign to them? Camdenton, MO, is that world, my friends.

At that point in my life, butterflies seems like a much too strong a word to describe my sentiments toward the opposite sex. It was less like the early stages of a crush and more like standing in a room for the first time with an alien: it was foreign in an out-of-this-world way and you were preoccupied with concerns about what would happen to your body while staring dumbfounded at theirs.

I was really just beginning to discover a few writing chops here and there in class, but poetry was quite a leap. It still is. I am no poet. I admire poets. I admire songwriters. They can express sentiment in an often direct and metaphoric way that I really can’t. I need sentences. Me without punctuation is like a painter without half the color wheel – it works, but it’s just not the same. Sure, maybe some abstract writing would do me some good, but it never comes naturally and always feels forced and overly sentimental. I hate that.

But I like challenges. I like competition, and even though I didn’t know why, I liked impressing girls even back then. Or at least, I liked TRYING to impress girls. I’m not actually sure I ever did or ever have. But that’s another matter entirely.

So here I am, sitting in my bedroom later that night, stressing out because everything I write is cheesy and I can’t get over it. My preoccupations with the absurd and trite were already an issue in eighth grade, and they weren’t making this task any easier. To make things worse, I had been listening to music that was stuck in my head. The song I was stuck on? “Make You Mad” by The Odds (Bruce McCulloch cameo!). If you remember The Odds, well, good for you. If not, look them up and you’ll quickly see how fleeting their rock moment was. They were like the Canadian Fastball. Which made them cooler, but less popular. Which I guess makes sense, in a hipster/elitist sort of way.

But the point is that the lyrics from that song were stuck in my head:

When I call you beautiful
it’s cause I can
and when you think I’m sucking up
I sort of am
the little lies that make you feel good
I say more often than I should
so I can never make you mad…

And the reality is those lyrics weren’t leaving (and in retrospect, obviously weren’t profound by any means). I thought they were cool, and romantic in not-so-sappy way. However, I also thought my Doc Martens and American Outpost clothes were fucking choice, which really dates this story and my perception.

Then it donned on me: there isn’t any way your English teacher has ever heard of The Odds, Max.

The poem wrote itself because, as my math teachers have always been able to attest, I am an excellent copier. I tweaked a few things to make it less ironic and more direct, “so I can never make you mad” became “so that I never lose you.” CHEESE. BALL. I feel dirty still.

I sweated over it for a bit, partially consumed with the notion that my teacher might be a closet MTV 2 fan, and was watching videos as constantly as I was (and undoubtedly spending inordinate amounts of time trying to figure out what Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo meant when he said he wanted a sugar in his tea). But I obviously felt pretty secure in the belief that this would go over fine and no one would be the wiser.

And you know what? I was right.

When it came time to announce the winners, my teacher admitted she had a tough time picking between the two finalists. I was one of them. But she had decided that Kurt Theobald had written the best poem. And he had. I don’t know who wrote the second-best poem, but it sure as hell wasn’t me. I was sort of relieved. Kurt was asked to read his poem to the class, and he did so with great vigor. (Always exuberant and sharp as hell, Kurt would go on to dominate extemporaneous speaking in Forensics in High School with a bit about getting a girl to go out with you. He could charm anyone, he was just that kind of guy. Smooth before any of us had any concept of what it really was. Once again, my mediocre, sort-of-ripped-off effort – “how to get a girl to break up with you” – would pale in comparison to his more genuine sentiments.) The class was impressed. Hell, I was impressed, even though I thought it was still some of the sappiest crap ever.

We all clapped and that was it. Except then I got a tap on the shoulder.

“Max, I don’t want you to feel left out. Please read yours to the class,” the teacher said.

“Oh no, that’s fine. I don’t need to, but thanks,” I said.

“Oh don’t be silly. Read it, you’ll be fine,” she insisted.

Ugh. I trudged up to the front of the class, ready to read my stolen sap.

I looked up at my classmates, and could see my buddies chuckling in the back. Why did I WANT to win this contest again? It seemed pretty stupid at that moment, especially now that I was following the kickass poem that won.

I read the poem. Everyone clapped. I felt like a dope, both for ripping it off and for reading a love poem in front of everyone. What a nerd.

As I walked out of the classroom, still a little flush in the face, I did realize one thing – she never found out I stole the poem, and I got an A.

It was a big moment in my life. It was the death of my attempts at poetry, and the birth of a semi-successful academic cheating career.

I don’t think that’s the sort of motivation Byron and Keats had in mind.