What do you mean you'll help me with my poetry?
What needs to be improved? Can it not just be
Random words strewn across the page? Is it not
Enough that I have poured my heart out into these
Words but that they are not the right words
Or placed in the right order?
Who am I seeking to impress? Am I seeking
To win the approval of academics? Stuffy men
And women accelerating mankind to an early
Demise, jabbing at people with their disease-filled
Quills?
How much art, how much beauty remains
Undiscovered because a timid soul refrains
From self-expression, put off by ridicule
In the classroom, so often goaded on by the school
Teacher's sarcastic barbs?
My muse must remain unacknowledged
Because she happened not to choose
The appropriate couplet? She is not college
Approved?
What do you mean it simply isn't very good?
It doesn't meet the standards of some arbitrary criteria.
It falls short in rhyme and metre, when in fact
The very act of creation - the courage you need
To put pen to paper, to bleed out the word -
On its own that act renders this piece of poetry
Perfect.