4: If they don’t get it, great. That’s half the battle won.

A voice is sacred. Being able to have said voice heard is coveted. Silence is deafening, but the silenced are not deaf. They hear, they feel, they are all-knowing, all encompassing. In the moment, they may prove incapable of getting a platform, but the urge to purge words is something forever preserved.

“…poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action. Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can thought. The farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.” (Lorde, 1977)

Escape, even if just for a flicker of a moment. Poetry awakens the soul; it shows and grows what you stand up for. Your beliefs bleed on paper, on the screen, a staunch rebuke of those destined to demean. The feeling felt when finishing a poem is the closing of a chapter once ignored, now the stepping-stone for your future revered.

Pungent poetry is not to be wailed over, but rather it comes in the moment, on demand. Man has always been chockful of opinion, but often refrain from challenging the persistent dominion. On paper, on the screen, you lead the way, with fear of failure as your only prey. There is no right or wrong in the poetic realm, it is your story to tell, your safe space, your zone.

Balk at the commotion that comes with the notion that not all are destined to be rhythmic. The power of sound and diction and pitch… it is all from within. We are rock-stars of our own fruition, screaming high on the Scottish hilltops, to everyone and anyone that would listen. We are not craving attention, but rather retention, by those who are inspired by our words of wisdom…to carve their very own in the stranglehold of the stalls. They will perpetuate confusion and falsehoods to undermine your profound effort, but flipping the script is the indicator of a life well lived, and poetry that has a home in the analects of history. If they don’t get it, great. That’s half the battle won. You tamed the beast of opportunist censorship.

Your victory is only found in continual introspection, while developing enriched retrospection. There will be forks in the roads, your will marred at times, tested to see if your agility is genuine. The poetry will always come to you, it will always be there for you, it will sing the songs you once never thought possible.

The optimal course of action, in torrid times, in the literary sublime, is to always let it be.