Another half-day of mindless scrolling Another half-day of unfocused rumination Another half-day of tired naps later, I find myself pleading guilty in the court of productivity and optimisation And so I dig into that bottomless sack of writing prompts I possess: My life. But what do I do now? Now that I've exhausted all those metaphors that never could convey anything concrete anyway; I think about writing a poem about the Ice Queen and not-so-subtly projecting on to her, I think about how I'm past the stages of romanticising, and of not romanticising, I think about all the poems I could write— Redundant, already crumpled and thrown in my paper-shredder mind. I dip my paintbrush in my blood And draw sigils on the floor sacrificing my body to sadness for poetry, Adorn the altar of insanity With the icy tinsel of my frozen tears, Cover the pebble made of scream stuck in my throat with colourful paint, tack some sequins on it Call it art, present to you to use as a paperweight. Here, inside the fortress built of enamel ribs I put a suction needle in my heart here, inside the safety of the exhibition gallery I have the luxury to air censored content— if it can be called a luxury, that is. I turn myself inside out, like a coat pocket Shake all the lint and dirt out on paper in the hope of being restored to my natural pocket-state (whatever that may be) But as anyone who's ever turned anything inside-out knows, you can never quite get rid of it all. I am not a Gryffindor, my art is a blanket woven out of cowardly moments Dyed out of silent vessels filled with nothing and everything Embroidered with the words 'Passive Deathwish' as if they mean anything to anyone but me; My art is this cozy blanket I'm getting too comfortable in. My art is the rug I hastily threw over the mess on the floor before you came in— Creation concealing destruction— You knocked, 'Come in,' I said, You said the rug was so pretty, you wish you'd made it You left but you didn't know that the rug's fused to the floor. Language is all we have between us: So much yet so little, so rich yet so lacking, Its inventions can heal anyone but its own inventor Or they can spread, contagious, like the virus I feel, treading borders too much to count— Until every work becomes so unique, uniqueness doesn't exist anymore. Only loneliness in a crowd. Beauty, you see, is only what art presents— pain is not poetic, nor sorrow edgy— For all its pure and noble ambitions, art has an ulterior motive: attention, validation, appreciation Why else cut yourself in half and indulge the world in this sensational magic trick? All the artist wants is to be seen. To be seen, to be heard, to be felt, Yet I do not want your sympathy I have no desire for your admiration for you only see the creation, maybe the preservation, But not the destruction that lies behind the bodies burnt in the plague before the renaissance; You see the rug and not the mess neither do you want to, and I understand— Well, what do I want then? Don't you see? I don't have a clue. How could I? How else could this poem exist?
Image by: Aiko Uchiha on We Heart It
Charlie and the cerebration factory 