We The Artists

Those who create art are unique beasts,
We creatures of colour and pain and surrealism,
And too often shunned like wild dogs,
Written off,
So I scribe here,
With an old quill,
A formal declaration,
For our affliction,

We The Artists,

The ones in dark-lit studies,
The ones confined to the cold outside,
Those who truly survey the world,
Authors and painters and sculptors,
Musicians and poets alike,
We are not you,
We are untamed and free,
Speaking ink and pigment,

Hail The Artists,

We’re observers,
Separate from your monotony,
Unassuming little eyes,
But a word of caution,
Don’t hurt an artist,
They’ll write about and paint you,
Showing the world the real you,
In all of your imperfection,

Fear The Artists,
We The Artists.

Vandalism

Walking these grey streets,
I brush a palm across brickwork,
There’s no pulse,
Behind this mask and under this hood,
These ocean eyes see no golden world,
No land of art,

It’s a blank canvas,
Concrete parchment oft marked by others,
Spray-can Picasso’s and urban scribes,
Little artists throwing nebulae upon bare skin,
Underpasses waiting for criminal blankets,
A graffiti louvre,

I want to join their rogues gallery,
Be a Banksy vigilante,
I want to share my kaleidoscopic hieroglyphs,
Contribute to this alleyway zeitgeist,
To bring art to a mundane city,
Spray paint resuscitation,

Damn the droll powers that be,
Those stifling janitors,
Bucket and water tyrants.

The Kiln

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.

Monster Of Art

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.

Art Attack

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.

Bad Prose

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.

Temple

To some the body is a temple,
A pagoda of perfection,
Built upon leylines of zen,
Spirituality making up the brick and mortar,
The human body sharpened to a spearpoint,
Physical prowess matched only by mental acumen,
Balance in all things,
These people are monks of the self,

It is an admirable way,
But it is not mine,
I’m more of a ronin of the road,
I walk and suffer what comes,
My body is more of an overloaded carriage,
Ramshackle yet sufficient,
Unbalanced yet relentless,
I get by in my inferior way.

Accolades

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.

Posthumous

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.

Mediocrity

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.