BEIRUT (REUTERS).- Ash falling from his cigarette, the Syrian poet taps his finger to the beat of a chant he recently heard from the southern town of Deraa, where an uprising against President Bashar al-Assad started in March. “It’s very creative and witty,” said Mohammad Diab, who now lives in neighboring Lebanon. “They write their poems in colloquial Arabic, not the formal Arabic us poets normally use. The beat and melody are very important in colloquial (language). I’ve tried to write in this style, but it’s too hard for me.” In living rooms across Syria young men and women are creating revolutionary poems, chants, cartoons and films, which they say provides an expressive outlet to protest and keeps up morale in the face of government bullets and torture. When the protests started, dissidents turned a simple loyalist tune entitled “God, Syria and only Bashar,” into a protest song titled “God, Syria and only freedom.”