Heal Thyself Poem by Bill Upton

Poets compose in highs and lows
Leaving the in-betweens for others to validate.
Life and death, heartbreak and glory
Touch their pens and interpret themselves.
Some even say depression can be tamed through poetry-
Poetry that empties pain from hopeless spirits.
Joy can be explained to the joyless
Through emotionally charged rhetoric from the poet,
Brimming with sensory enhancement.
Loss of love can be absorbed and soothed by verse
With verbal closure to severed heart strings.
The sting of death can be lessened by acknowledgement of the gut punch
Felt within the process of assimilation.
Poetry is the mechanism through which we heal,
By the gift of release and comfort within the disclosure.
Therapy, through poetry, can trump medical medicine
In matters of the heart.
It can spiral feelings during life's defining moments-
From epicenters of pain
Through black holes of remedy.
Poetry does not just reflect life.
Poetry does not just magnify life.
The cathartic magic is real.
Poetry BECOMES life.