Silenced - A Stab at Poetry

I spent most of the night on this. It's written in (more or less) iambic tetrametre with every quatrain's last line shortened to trimetre. I'm not sure to what degree convention should be upheld in poetry, I only tried to follow it based on some basic metres I learned in my poetry class(which I failed, incidentally). At least I was consistent with the metre.

I feel it's quite unfocused and difficult to understand, but maybe that's just me. I was surprised at how easily most of it came to me, with no prior planning or idea further than "I feel like writing a poem." Technically, it's my third poem, but it feels like my first; I actually tried to hold myself to a rhythm this time, and had a bit of a message.

Here it is:

Silenced

Suppressed, like pistol shots held short
from greatness, violence, or newsstands.
A muffled voice can not cry out,
but only does within.

What purpose can it serve? A truth
is words not spoken from free men.
But mounting pressure frees the lips,
may tell what’s true or false.

Follows it through, more words or deed,
when promise is broken or made?
It matters not, if words are sharp
as metal piercing skin.

A postcard lies in ashes strewn,
as worthless without words as with.
Fireless shot burns truth and deceit,
brings void, nothing to mean.

If it rings false, or it rings true,
at very least may it at all?
For silence bears the brunt of pain,
whether deserved or not.

The message makes it not to press
upon the minds of soft or old,
when smothered by the cylinder
of trappings cold and bright