The world is riddled with malice, tears, and compassion. There is laughter and there is hatred. There’s killing and healing and loving around every page of life that’s turned. Some people can’t handle it, yet some are accepting enough to cope well. Others are simply driven mad, and even more don’t get the chance to find out. Diversity and dispute have ripped mankind apart … but one truth still stands. One truth holds us together at the seams, no matter if we’re fighting one another or kissing; one thing we all have in common, in the face of both Hell’s eternal fire and Heaven’s everlasting glory – and that one thing, that single indisputable truth, is the existence of our creativity. It’s poetry, it’s art, it’s storytelling, it’s communication; it’s everything we have when it seems like nothing’s left. It’s an expression of emotions we hold so deep within ourselves that we don’t even know they exist. It’s the graceful dancing of purity and grandeur behind a crude, destructive mask of antipathy. It’s artistry; a mastery of dignity and feelings on a level so radiant and subtle that very few can even dream of imagining it.

People read poetry because it’s beautiful. They can relate to it, it’s entertaining, it’s inspiring, it can even be educational – and it…it is wondrous and absolutely amazing. Perhaps this is a subject you are uncomfortable with, but people around the world are reading poems that can touch their lives so deeply it that it could change them forever. Words are powerful, and the best thing about them is that anyone can knit them into any pattern of their liking at any time, no matter their skill, competence, knowledge, understanding, imagination, or barest interest.

People write poetry because it’s a way of losing oneself; a way to become one with the world, one with reality and dreams and humanity. It’s a way for poets to release all the pain, happiness, desire, anger, and so on–stuff that builds up over time like big, evolving boulders on our shoulders. Writing poetry is similar to cutting, or even drugs, in a way, because it can be addicting, soothing – only it’s not as dangerous, and it’s "high" is akin to the simple thrill of living.

Compare the dancing of blades on skin or the boiling of drugs within blood to the clumsy first attempts of an infant’s walk. That clumsy walking is a representation of the first writings of mankind – maybe not as innocent, and maybe not as ignorant; but it is the start of a new beginning. Blades and drugs have a beginning, too: the beginning of a dark, starless night without hope for warmth.

The weaving of the written word is more intricate than the creation of a spider’s web. It is spun with the threads of time and history; embedded with the emotion and wonders of the world. It is speckled with hidden meaning and mysterious clues, overcome with passion and persistent desire, and tortured with the excruciating pain of troubled, lost souls. To write anything is to compose music, and to write well, whether it’s solid prose or elegant poetry, is to orchestrate a grand symphony.