There is a heat within a creative,
A golden core,
Cultivated by quills and easels,
Stoked by pokers of artistic intent,
It’s a kiln,
But in place of flames,
A conflagration of purpose,
There are constellations of mental images,
Nebulae of inkblots,
And verse on the tails of comets,
A sun exploding held in stasis,
A masterpiece created piecemeal.
When you imagine an artist,
You do not see me,
You see a noble practitioner of the word,
Your Tolkiens and Pratchetts,
Not me,
Not this freak with a pen,
I’m no artist,
I’m a monster of art,
My process is more of a hunt,
Deranged savagery in each stroke,
Less the orchestration of an artistic vision,
And more the dismemberment of prose,
The words I scribble are the meat,
The meanings behind them are a bitter aftertaste,
A happy accident,
Rending phrase from stanza,
Mutilating rather than composing,
Poetry coming from a state of psychosis,
I’ve read the greats,
My fangs were cut on their work,
This creature is a deviation from their ways,
I write because I must,
Perhaps one day,
I’ll write this monster a happy ending.
Creation is a messy business,
A butchers art,
Paint and ink and cloth,
Blood and sweat and tears,
The created takes a piece of the creator,
No art has existed without litter and plight,
The debris lies about as proof,
Scratches in the dark,
Spots of every prism soaked into wood,
Pencil sharpenings and empty mugs,
Burned out candles and the aroma of exertion,
A wasteland left by the authors hand,
The deed is done,
Your masterpiece formed,
But the mess remains.
The page spits in my face,
Goblets of verse striking my cheeks,
The lamps grow dim,
The night drags on,
I’m on the backfoot,
The prose is fighting back,
It shrieks back in subtext,
Spite in every drop of ink,
The characters rising up in protest,
Letters as torches and pitchforks,
Punctuation as hidden blades,
This mass of written flesh,
It rages against its own conception,
This is no poetic creation,
But an adversary,
An abomination.
For our graft to bear fruit,
We throw ourselves wholly into our art,
We seek no reward,
That’s not the point,
We don’t want medals,
But perhaps a verbal salve to the heart,
We all want that pat on the back,
A show of hands from family and colleagues,
Acclaim and recognition,
Perhaps even grand fame,
To be acknowledged,
It’s only human nature,
But I say all of that be secondary,
The best accolades come from within,
The warmth of ones own creative furnace,
The feeling of a job well done,
It’s true that we are our own most vicious critic,
But we ought to be our most fervent devotee.
I am not foreordained to be remembered,
Not like the greats,
Shakespeare,
Austen and Tolkien,
Dickenson and Dickens,
Keats and Angelou,
My exertions are that of a novice in comparison,
My work akin to finger painting,
My aspirations that of a foolish mummer,
I’m not to be remembered,
Not to be celebrated,
I am a ghost among artists,
Not yet exorcised,
Scratching nonsense in to chalk,
Wailing from outside the halls of fame,
I won’t be allowed in,
As souls of creative import congregate within,
Myself an ungifted wraith will claw limply at the door,
I’ll pass with not a mention,
And when I am finally ash,
Everything I’ve done will follow,
Off into the solar winds,
And out of memory.
You would not have noticed me,
It’s entirely alright,
I am an essence blessed of mediocrity,
As I extol my virtues and values I am see-through,
I am every shade of grey between lifes colours,
The type one walks by while looking at the sidewalk,
I’m nothing special,
Barely subpar,
Middling at best,
A gemstone found to be fake,
An unnoticed epitaph of a man,
A walking grave of someone with promise,
I write cold tales and impish sonnets,
A doomsayer and miser on a street corner,
You would not have heard of me,
But it’s alright,
I am nobody,
I am nothing.
Words fall upon my work,
Daggers of syllables and critical edges,
This deluge of societal pressure grows tiresome,
You must do it this way they proclaim,
Overbearing suits looking down,
They extol rules of grammar and structure,
Scripture of artistic canon,
Why must art follow a blueprint?
Does it follow a routine?
Is it supposed to follow monotony?
I am no revolutionary,
But I write in anarchic tones,
I create as a spirit of chaos,
It is as spraypaint wind,
My stanzas form as they may,
I am no vandal,
You shall never find me looting or pillaging,
But I shall create as I do,
I simply cannot succumb,
There are no rules to my art,
I’m an anarchist.
Look at me,
Gaze upon my singular face,
Hark to this clown,
For it takes a fool to see the truth of things,
A madman to understand the world,
So I daub each colour upon my jesters aspect,
This face of paints,
It shifts like a tumultuous sea,
Replete with vivid corals of all shades,
Prismatic tsunamis as expressions shift,
Yet this mind is more of a circus,
I’m a deranged showman in truth,
I wield these colours instead of emotions,
Each chroma deciphering an aspect of reality,
To shine light on mans vices,
They are my true face,
For it requires lunacy to be totally free,
And insanity is the only truly sane way to exist,
An arbiter of pure chaos,
True art,
A clown to point the crooked way,
I’m the Oldschool Harlequin.
Society dragged me aside to let me know,
I have childish notions of being an artist,
A foolish path,
Ludicrous wants and ideas,
Plans of a dunce,
Or so am I led to believe,
Am I just pretending?
An impostor,
Doing the motions without understanding?
Wearing my silly apron,
With my silly pen,
Writing my silly little words,
When I string together webs of emotion,
Am I a creator?
When I put words to paper,
Am I a writer?
When I brush colour on to parchment,
Am I a painter?
I don’t know the truth of it,
Perhaps I do sully the name of wordsmith,
Playing at artistry,
Wearing a mask of competence,
Though I shake behind it,
Perhaps I am just pretending after all.
WorldofHarley 