Taproot worked with
producer Toby Wright during the making of
Welcome. According to
frontman Stephen Richards: "We went into the sessions with thirty songs written and ready for pre-production, but Wright pared the thirty down to four. And he had us write fifteen more. But it was actually really great. He saw a lot of similarities between songs that we had written, a lot of one-dimensional writing, and just suggested that we take the best parts of each and cut them down and combine them and make them better. So we took some of the good old stuff and reworked into better songs, and some of the newer stuff is actually the material we're most excited about." "Poem" was one of the songs that was written before production of the album began.
Guitarist Mike DeWolf elaborated: :"That's actually the first song we wrote for the album. . . We played it at the
2001 Ozzfest and there was a big reaction. The kids went nuts for it even more than to our other songs that they'd heard a million times before. In production we changed little things here and there to make it stronger, but it's basically the same song." "Poem" was performed on the December 13, 2002 edition of
Last Call with Carson Daly. The band was late due to weather troubles in
Chicago but treated the audience to a half-hour set. A live version of the song was included on the
Music as a Weapon II album in 2004. "Poem" was also featured on the
soundtracks for both
MVP Baseball 2003 and
True Crime: Streets of L.A. The popular single begins with a few solo
guitar chords before breaking into a heavy introduction. The singing style continuously shifts back and forth between
harsh and clean vocals, and its
chorus lyrics reference the instructions seen on
fire alarms ("
In case of fire, break the glass and move on into your own"). ==Music video==