The Artmakers: Poems
constellation #4
I have always loved being creative, and have worked in many different mediums and formats over the years. In the end, I decided to focus on writing, but I really loved art while I was growing up, and even studied design for three semesters in college.
This is a collection of poems about what it is like to be an artist.
The Artmakers
We are, all of us,
just gazing out windows,
dreaming in dusk,
eating paper stars
off their strings
thinking indigo thoughts.
We are, all of us,
aching,
ribs, and hips,
and shoulders stiff,
hunched
over soul on canvas,
painted, written, bled.
We are, all of us,
sat on frameless mattresses
in the lowlight of our
table lamps on the carpet.
We are, all of us,
starving.
Creation for Creation’s Sake
In the house around the corner,
Laurie’s mother teaches us
to make a quilt.
Where once there was nothing,
something.
In the basement next door
we painted suncatchers
for the spring.
Where once there was nothing,
color and light.
On the porch along the coast,
we strung up seashells
and pebbles from the shore.
Mom made the treehouse
in the backyard,
and we played pretend.
Where once there was nothing,
something in the air.
Maybe we are just
creation for creation’s sake.
Where once there was nothing,
something.
Where once there was nothing,
living and life.
Still, Life
I don’t know;
I used to have to pick mediums
for art assignments
and pretend to know why.
Charcoal for the drama,
clay for the slope of his face.
I don’t know;
I should never really
have studied art.
When I was five,
I painted a bowl of fruit
with Crayola watercolors
and mom hung it in the hallway
for ten years.
I was so good at being
exceptional back then.
I was so good at the world
when it was made of
words and colors,
and light and shapes.
Now I am weighed down by it,
lost in the blur of some impressionist fog.
There is not even anything exceptional
about having been exceptional,
we were all the exception, weren’t we?
Then Jocelyn,
with her long gray hair,
and intimidating stare,
and her books full of paintings
taught me to draw in Audubon.
Studio evenings after school,
all dust, and lines, and good, rough paper.
I’d get grease on my jeans during break every time.
We would stand on the grate and wait for slices.
We would measure with our thumbs.
We would sketch one hundred bowls of fruit
by the end of the year.
I never meant hold a brush for so long,
still, life paints you,
just as you paint the fruit.
I should never really
have studied art,
though I can’t imagine
not writing this poem.
Watercolor, for the way the people
move across the pavement?
Oil, for the way the light
leads your eye to her’s?
I don’t know, and
still, life
paints me like I do,
still, life
goes on and on,
the only real
exceptional thing.
Eudaimonia
I know that they are good,
my spirits,
for the way that they feel
at my shoulder.
I know that they are good
because I am not.
I am your hands,
I am your hands.
How do we achieve
the highest human good?
I am your mouth,
you are my thought,
I know that you are good.
I’m sorry for the way I
blocked you out
like a ghost town dream
the night before the first day.
I came back to you,
the only one who’d
wait so long for me.
Here it is, then,
eudaimonia:
The thing you want to do
helps you live,
and your life
makes the thing you want to do
worth doing at all.
It doesn’t seem
such a desert thirst to me,
but then why have we all
been waiting this long?
I know that I will have it.
I am not charmed
but my spirits are good,
they will see to it
that I have it.
I know that they are good.
Person/ Proclamation
Sometimes I am not alive,
I am just a vessel
for chaos thought
and terrible rhyme.
I listen
and they tell me
what to do
with my time.
I’m a walking
proclamation
of everything
that happens in my mind.
It’s not easy
to switch
between person
and proclamation.
Sometimes,
I get stuck,
sometimes,
I get left behind.
Arsonist Days
Urges to rhyme today,
and the strange pass of time today.
And the candle burns low in me.
Awkward words stoke the flame
just enough to keep it struggling,
barely
alight.
Went like —
Stuck in some forgotten loop, I drove
along that river route every endless night,
every endless day and night,
just driving by and telling time.
Urges to rhyme and repeat
and keep time and repeat
and race the rhythm,
running on drops of kerosene,
and cover stories and catalogues.
I’m wasting all my paper;
pages and pages for the flame
and it just dies and dies.
I was talking about
this time last year,
the weeks gone slowly
by
and by
and by —
This time, back then, I was first deciding
that spring could finally have me.
And the fabric underneath my coat
shimmered like the last houseboat
on the row as I went by and by,
look at the time, it’s 5:09
Took scissors to my bangs today.
This is what happens when they all go away.
The arsonist will set herself on fire
if she thinks it is the only way.
Waste
Accomplishments today:
body right and the concrete
cleansing of things.
All great, but still
not as good as days
of paper and pen,
days of sweet music
and stories on screens,
inspiration reigning,
dousing me in kerosene,
and striking me against
the way of things
just so.
And then,
creation,
white hot,
moving through me like
a dancer through the air.
And I know they all want me
to have days and days
of concrete,
of fresh oxygen,
and acknowledgement of form,
but, to me, today
just seemed a waste.
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