Tom Sawyer met a girl who wrote some verse
With lovely rhymes and meters oh so tight.
My teacher smirked. “The joke is that it’s worse
Than poems whose rhythm may not feel so right.
A poem’s subject shouldn’t be a fright
To make it dark. It should be from your heart.”
Most experts know that dark cannot beat light
Except in those who felt it from the start.
But even in my joy I make sad art…
I find what I write best is bittersweet.
Enforcing glee puts horse before the cart:
One’s art needs to be true to be complete.
No moment in our lives is joy OR sorrow;
Each one alone will bring its friend tomorrow.