It’s not supposed to be frustrating

Was it not meant to be liberating?

Who made the rules?

Who abides by them?

We did and we do

We can forget them too

Be grammar rebels

Art lovers

Be called amateurs

Choose poet over writer

Human over pro

If they complain, say creativity told us so

They always said I can’t

Told me to think of writing like I thought of punctuation

Precise

Structured

Make sentences objective

Because I can’t start with because

Even now, I hear me echo them

“You lost your rhyme”

Were you ever really talented?

But my poetry responds:

The rhyme of my lines is tuned to that of my mind

I’ll sound like the boom of the drums instead of the violins sometimes

It’s okay to bring the beat to an orchestra of strings

Let me push my way to the stage

Not earn a badge with my name

Let me use words without vocabulary

Clear a space for me in the last row

In the last show of the least popular band

I want to bring my lively tune to the limited song

Maybe my name won’t be printed on book covers

But it will be painted on heart walls

I want to learn how to love

Before people hear my prose

Empty the page

So my poetry will flow from within

And instead of teaching me how to write,

Teach me how to live

How can I create beauty if I don’t know my own?

How can I use my abilities if I don’t know their source?

I can’t do if I haven’t learned to be

Millennials like to edit too much

It’s why we believe we aren’t good enough

We forget to value how speech has accent

Drafts sound rough

Words can die or resurrect in the time it takes a child to grow up

Teachers, scholars, systems, and peoples

Let my poetry sound like me

Look like me

Feel like me

Is that not what it is?

An overflow of my crowded heart

The small voice of a child

Wanting to create but not knowing how

That’s why I loved it before I loved language

It lets me make like I move

With errors

Floating on a puddle of doubt with a paper boat of faith

With words for sails and freedom for wind,

I know I’ll make it out before all the water makes it in

Poetry is no academic field

Just a field

Unlearning is how we run here

Let it be cageless in a world of control

Let it be yes in a world of no

Let it be me in a world of them

That’s poetry