What Poetry Has Taught Me

It taught me to write

It taught me to read

It taught me to want

It taught me to need

It taught me to rhyme

It taught me to see

It taught me to help

It taught me to be

It taught me to write out emotions

when I could only speak in similes

It taught me to read through the lines

like Mozart with symphonies

It taught me want when my heart filled with the envy

It taught me to need when words bleed out my pen-speak

It taught me to rhyme with words so absurd that when I traversed

through the stanzas that I versed into verses to verse

the thoughts I was thinking when I went off on tangents

without planning an ending, it brought it all back together

through lines that I write in due time and I find that this climb

on the vine of this life that’s like morning to night; is semicolons to a splice,

is pumpkins to spice, is the rats to the mice is the balance dark to the light,

is the point to the knife, and is an expression of my

thoughts.

It taught me to see my way back on track when I focused on rhyming

instead of the lines and instead of the point of what poetry taught me

It taught me to help my friends when I empathized with their pain

and put myself in their shoes to experience their heartbreak

It helped me to be the person I knew I could be and that person

is the person who understands what poetry taught me.

It taught me to write when I wrote it

It taught me to read when I noticed

It taught me to want what I needed

It taught me to need what I needed

It taught me to rhyme when I could

It taught me to see what I should

It taught me to help who I can

It taught me to be who I am