Wife-Beating Poet

I once knew a wife-beating poet
He wrote reasonably good poetry
His words were well-chosen
So that people thought his poems bared his soul

He pretended he was a poet of pure passion
But his language were never as angry as his heart
For all the feelings he voiced with his vocabulary
His free verse was just a front

With every metaphor, he knew he was merely mediocre
With every rhyme, his rage held him hostage
With every figuration, his fury masked his fear

When he couldn’t write anymore, he punished her for being too good for him
His viciousness replaced his vocabulary

She decided she couldn’t let him destroy her
She didn’t have his gift with words
She could never tell anyone what he’d done
Her firearm replaced her fear

She asked him to read her a poem
He read her something arbitrary from his notebook

She didn’t hate him, she just didn’t love him enough to die for him
A bullet hole burned through his notebook and his heart like truth
She killed him while he read a poem for her
Because she loved him so much that she wanted him to die
Doing something that he loved as much as he should have loved her