Anger is a bad messenger with a good message sometimes
Anger is a bad messenger running the right lines
Into the room before the polite version
Would have gotten there, before the conversion
Of the true thing into the acceptable
Before the filing down of the detectable
Edge of the actual into the smooth
Before the thing was sanded into groove
The bad messenger arrives with the hair on fire
The bad messenger arrives through the barbed wire
Of the appropriate response and dumps the parcel
On the floor, the contents scattered, the castle
Of the comfortable arrangement shattered
And the truth inside the parcel splattered
Across the walls and everyone can see it
And everyone knows it’s true but none agree it
The truth that anger tells is still the truth
The truth that anger tells arrived uncouth
And underdressed for the occasion but it’s there
The truth that anger tells is in the air
Of every room where someone finally said
The thing that had been living in their head
For years before the moment that it surfaced
The truth that anger tells has a purpose
That the carefully constructed lie doesn’t
The truth that anger tells because it doesn’t
Have the patience of the civil conversation
The truth that anger tells is the translation
Of what’s been true into what’s finally spoken
The truth that anger tells is the cracked token
Of the conversation that should have happened first
The truth that anger tells, it’s unrehearsed