Conformity

If listening to music with swears
Defined your personality
Then I would probably be
At the bottom of a ditch
Bloody and broken
With drugs in my pocket
And booze on my breath


Not to say that I’ve gone unscathed
And I’m definitely not saying
That I’m not at the bottom of a ditch
Currently
There is just a definite absence
Of illegal substances


Just because my writing involves
Four letter words
And violence
Just because my music has
A huge letter E
On the cover art
Marking it “explicit”
Just because I like to describe things
In horrible, gory detail
Just because my writing
My stories
My poems
My songs
Don’t always have happy endings
Does not mean that they are not art


I used to think
That if I wrote something
About death
Or violence
I would be locked away
In an insane asylum
Or somewhere similar


You misinterpret my music
As the music of a hooligan
You misinterpret my stories
As the writing of a psychopath
You fail to acknowledge
That my poems have meaning
Making me think
That I cannot write them at all


I kill people in my stories
Because sometimes
There’s no way around it
It is the only way
To get my message
Or the severity of the situation across


My music swears
Because sometimes
The only word that can describe
My feelings
At that exact moment
Is a word that starts with an F
And ends with a K


My poems are not traditional
They do not rhyme
And their stanzas are not consistent
That does not mean
They are not poetry


My art is my own
And I will not let anyone but myself
Dictate its worth