I'd Burn My Art To Feel Nothing

For years and years, through centuries and ages,

the ones who made the most unforgettable art

had the most forgettable lives.

Because trauma and abuse,

sadomasochism and self-sabotage

aren’t exactly on the grocery list

of a life worth remembering.

That’s how the tremors,

the ghosts of my ghastly past

and grim present,

have been justified —

by self-proclaimed intellectuals

with bone-dry empathy

and second-hand philosophies.

That’s an insanely poisonous species, you see —

they think they know all they need to

while their hollow bones clap

to the dance recital

of their singular brain cell,

as they wrap their crooked teeth

around borrowed perspectives

and stolen importances —

an elaborate fellatio

to their obese egos,

leaving cum stains on art

they didn’t even suffer for.

You think I’m happy to be creating art?

You think anyone birthing real art

is happy to be creating it?

Art, for most of us,

is the therapy we couldn’t afford,

in a world obsessed with outlines,

box-ticking,

diagnoses dressed in denial.

You get a boner in the name of art —

because it looks good,

because it sells well,

because it tastes like sophistication

on your curated palate of aesthetic consumption.

But you won’t care

for the bleeding fingers,

for the broken ribs it was born out of.

You never do.

Because you think art is what matters —

who cares what it cost?

That’s the shallow pond you want me to swim in.

But I’m drowning in it.

And I swear to god,

I would trade every syllable,

every stanza,

every standing ovation,

to have a mediocre, meandering, meaningless existence

if that meant

I could undo all that defiles me,

and be happy.

But here I am —

still bleeding for strangers

who’ll hang my pain on their gallery walls,

frame my trauma in gold,

and forget to ask

if I’m still alive.