Good poems tend to be personal.Great poems are often passionate.Can a good poem be to close ora great poem to emotional?  If I told you that my friend was assaultedby her first boyfriend, is that too much?How about if I said my biggest fear isfailure,or if I told you depression comes late nights lookingfor a doomed lover on an internet date with mydisgusting desires.Does detail make the words deafening?From the fact that my first high school sweetheartgot beaten by her mom untilthe authorities made herleave her only known homeand graduate early in hopes of finding away to create hope out of the chaos. If it wasn’t an “A” on every paper,it was time to absorb a night of verbal abuse.When “B” stood forBitch, her mother’s the useless waste of a daughter.I was her boyfriend through this. Too much?What about you?What details do you choose to forgetbecause they make you into what you don’t want to be?Did something so right go so terribly wrongthat you promised never to love.To never care.To always be strong. Because that strength won’t last.What length will you go to hide your trashed past?Forget Friends.Push Past Parents.Leave Lovers, burn bibles, flame flagsbecause no one can no why your eye sags or why your speech lags.No one can know your father called his kids fags in his drunken rage.Once depression was your friend,but now it is your captor who won’t let your friendship end. Yet people still commend your writing.They hear only the biting words and not what they’re hiding.The bigger the sorrow, the better the poem, for it has more to hide.I tell you the shocking facts so you won’tsee the simple truth thatI too hurt.