The Price of Poetry

The price of poetry
is the same as laying your soul bare.
You put your heart on the line
every time your words take like birds to the air.
You are naked as you undress your defences
behind metaphors, sentences and rhyme.
When you live life like an open book
where anyone can look,
there's often a cost, often a fine.
All the time spent soul searching, analysing
fantasizing and dreaming,
only for them to twist your words
and contort the meaning.
Or glance over them before tossing 'em aside
as cheap sentiment or worthless pride.
Poems are snapshots of what lives in your mind
and can be reminders of times best left behind.
Like when dedications fall upon deaf ears
like unanswered prayers
bringing you to tears
as you're met with blank stares.
Or odes to loved ones on the other side
words left unsaid now speak to the dead
unseen and unread until the flow has died.
The price of poetry
is much like the cost of therapy.
As you fall through the trap door of conciousness
to explore the psyche.
Pulling out skeletons and hidden desires
until the day the gift of your curse expires.
And when they take your light but reject your dark
you have to fight to hold on to the spark.
Running out of lyrics when you most need a song
and your pens run dry or you write it wrong.
They see the chinks in your amour
as dents in your head!
and are speechless you dared to say what you said.
The price of poetry, for me
will never be as cheap as a disguise,
for it is the light of my truth that reveals my lies.
The good, the bad, the ugly, all of me!
The price of poetry is the gift of truth
that sets me free.