Welcome to April, National Poetry Month.  Since 1996, the Academy of American Poets has celebrated the legacy and achievement of American poets, introduced Americans to the joys of reading poetry, and made poetry an important part of school curriculum.

On HealthCentral, we will celebrate the talents of our own RA community and create a place to share our thoughts, our words, our poems throughout the month of April.  To get us started, I created a poem which features a side of rheumatoid arthritis. 

In looking for inspiration, I took the word “rheumatoid arthritis” and created this acrostic poem.  An acrostic poem is one in which the first letter of each line creates a word when read vertically.  Try your own and place in it in the comments section below.

Another type of poem would be the Haiku.  An English Haiku is comprised of three lines, each having 5 syllables, 7 syllables, and 5 syllables respectively.  Haikus can be presented together as one longer poem.

What would you say to your disease or about your disease in 17 syllables?  Post yours Haikus in the comments section. Let’s have some fun during National Poetry Month.  I look forward to seeing how creative our community can be.

Lisa Emrich is author of the blog Brass and Ivory: Life with MS and RA and founder of the Carnival of MS Bloggers.