A tool of comfort

Poetry is the freedom to dance on stardust

Waltzing in 3/4ths time on beauty fabricated

To call forth ideals I’m too fearful to express

A secret whispered in quieted, cryptic words

A glamour to warp the twisted cruelty I am unable to express

Spin a spell to turn blood into watercolour ruby

Boulders to heavy to shoulder broken into

Bits of gravel and coal

Pressed problems into twinkling diamonds

I’ve learned of the struggles

Friends whisper in passing, half hearted phrases

But described at length in poems

Alter ego’s of lovely, tortured poets

Fragile and strong, broken and towering

Something of brittle metal, bending long before breaking

Straddle the contradiction

Of the complexity of emotion

Of the wanted simplicity

Inspired by english classes and classic poems

That let me turn nails in my jaw

Into colour, into words previously left unexpressed

Poetry has the power to turn

That which I cannot bear to see

Into easy to swallow metaphor

A tool without which

My words would have poisoned me

As surely as cyanide