Poetry Dare Day 17: Misconceptions

Misconception: life should be easy.
Truth: life is only easy for those
who aren't living; life
runs on survival – it tests you
until you want to clench your fists, strike
hard enough to break, but
the open hand will always be stronger because
it can build, hold, love, and hope.

Misconception: Black belt means you are higher up
on the Chuck Norris ass-kicking scale.
Truth: Black belt means master of basics and takes
about eight years to complete. The basis of basics
mastery is rooted in the strength of your legs to
stand tall without fault – sure, flying is nice,
but ground doesn't give for those with focus
enough to stand. Hand to hand takes a backseat
to respect, discipline, honor, and integrity, but
only those who've studied fighting can attest
to why it ought be avoided.

Misconception: children should learn at a distance
in order to avoid pain
Truth: People, not just children, should experiment in the thick
of it. Making mistakes will not one knowledge
so long as he or she is given a chance to reflect
upon the experiential evidence gathered up in mistake's wake.
Exception: People need not be exposed to violence directly
in order to understand its effects first hand
Some lessons are not worth learning – innocence
need not be traded so that a person can learn that
not all men are to be trusted – hands
only form to fists when children are taught violence early,
and hands will always be strong open because they
are used to hold rather than smash bones
like innocence.

Misconception: Hatred hastens change along with
threats of death and force
Truth: Newton's third law prohibits this
from achieving truth – every action will be met
with an equal reaction – force and threats
at the behest of gunpoint or sword are
met with unbreakable resilience, and
all that is made of matter
will one day decay – swords rust into dust,
only words
can withstand time as both are endless and
only need a mind to conceive them in order to activate.
Exception: Words are at the whim of people with
too much time on their hands – meaning gets
driven out like erosion breaks down mountains
so words which once stood for something,
with too much misuse, get ground to dust –
this is how progressive, conservative, democrat,
republican, pro-life, choice, gun, rights, American
can come to hold less breath than a whisper and
why no one listens when these words enter conversations:
the only sound aloud is the crumbling quake of shaky earth

Misconception: Poetry is a power possessed by a select few.
Truth: Poetry is a process through which one's heart
is carved from chest, penned to paper, and
put back in again. It is the conversion of
the private to the public, a story-teller's tool
to make the esoteric understood. Anyone
who has made oxygen into energy and exhaled CO2
has the makings of poetry in their veins simply
because they have changed the world – anyone
who has loved or lost, felt sleepless lat at night,
woken with more energy than miles, less
breath than sweat, or the same shirt
on too many different days knows the exhilaration
of expression. Poetry is truth.