A Poet Tried To Shackle My Words Poem by Gert Strydom

A poet tried to shackle my words,
as if from every poem
the message was stripped,
as if nowhere there was any mastery
of rhythm and sound to be found

as if I had sold my soul
to masses of people reading my verses,
as if I live in disrespect
to the expertise that a great poet
displays in his work

as if every line of mine
was just a wild cacophony
that I had flung together
in a utter hurry
to shower down on crowds of people.

Yet I while I swam against a tempest sea,
sticking to the truth and integrity,
trying to find answers to life’s mysteries
and problems
trying to expose injustice and oppression
there was boasting about a elitis clique
that totally excludes me

but they were going along the path
of political correctness and maybe indifference,
being far too scared to ruffle some feathers,
writing verses sixty times over and over
before they were becoming poems somehow,
before their words were catching some magic

believing that a great poem,
is like a jigsaw puzzle,
that you have got to unravel
with a dictionary,
where simple words can fuse together
with a own type of magic,

lacking in the ability
to find poetry in ordinary things,
to create poetry in lines
that by themselves fuses together
to create something great

but my words kept on coming,
falling into lines,
as if designed by a divine presence
and by themselves fused
into much deeper meaning
than I could find with my own abilities.