I don’t like poetry,
 With its meters and rhymes,
 With ideas abstract and feelings aplenty,
 What has anyone achieved by shelling out their feelings?
 Scribbling on a paper with torn-up meanings.
  
 Here I came with trembling in my bones,
 With salt on my tongue and a rhyme on my paper,
 In front of all, in front of none,
 It was deemed by the teacher as fun.
  
 Here she came with shades in tow, thinking it’s a new spin,
 She smiled, nod and went along without a hitch,
 I lifted up the paper clattering my teeth,
 Wanting a release, from the demons that require me to speak
  
 What compels people to write something that rhymes,
 To let out the heart’s anguish, perhaps never changes with the times,
 From eons past, and the foreseeable future,
 This practice shall continue,
 Haunting as it may be, I shall be enslaved too
  
 Unable to think with only my desires,
 I spit out some words, for some grade higher,
 She hisses sweet praise, about a poet or two,
 I wonder how if I could compete with one or two.
  
 It is simple, she says, it can be done, they agree,
 From those without a dime,
 To those who commit a crime,
 From scribbling in your bedroom, 
 To reciting in a hall.
 This desire exists within all.
 As did in me as I marched on the podium,
 But to rush back to my happy medium
  
 Crumpling the paper, 
 Along with my confidence,
 I had to do it, there was no other option,
 Cracked was my voice as I uttered the verse,
 I ended up with a mighty thirst
  
 Not for water, or credit or an applause,
 But for me to return to my pure purple prose,
 For I couldn’t understand it, but did acknowledge a crude fact
 There shall always be present this need, this obsession,
 To rhyme a sorrow away, to chant a longing,
 But, without a structure, without clear meaning,
 Just like a mirror to the heart’s whims,
 A terrible, fleeting form of communication,
 Unclear, unknown yet reachable.
 To all those who hear and not read
  
 What a truly convoluted mess of ideas,
 I thought to myself as I recited,
 My first, my poem, openly to a silent audience
  
 Isn’t he funny? Isn’t he strange?
 Didn’t everything he know change?
 Isn’t he a ball full of rage? Isn’t he distracted?
 She kept pointing out like a sage.
  
 When Protagoras ranted his heart out,
 In the midst of madness, with a hint of sadness,
 That Man was the measure of all things,
 He had certainly made a point
  
 Unlike her sitting across the table,
 Unable to pull myself out of this ditch,
 She adjusted her glasses, almost sorry at my state.
 Yet, I held on with meagre hope.
  
 Because, I had a point, I was right in my head,
 That poetry was a curse, I hadn’t wanted
 Yet forced to express, in this limited form, 
 Always unfairly next to the mighty prose,
 With its structure, poise and form strong,
 Unlike the poem, riddled with error,
 The prose was robust with the reader.
  
 She stepped up, rose to her tallest,
 Fist of iron, she snatched away my poem,
 I shrunk underneath her razor gaze,
 Still dreaming about some wonderful novel
  
 But Protagoras had a point, a motive,
 I agreed wholeheartedly, to the criticism dolled at me,
 That I couldn’t see the beauty in poetry,
 I questioned her if it had any symmetry?
  
 She turned red, I turned pale,
 Torn was my question to shreds,
 She laughed at me, they chimed in,
 And I left the podium with my heart sinking.
  
 And that was the end of my embarrassing moment,
 When a Writer was turned into a poet.