Art is not always the butterflies in your stomach nor the sparks in the air when you fell in love. It is not the smooth skin on your ass, curves of your hips and loveliness of your face and all of the aesthetically pleasing things. It is not the teen spirit on a midnight swim after a mind-blowing youth party. It is not the drugs you sniff, it is not happiness, most of the time.
Art is the reality itself that needs to be expressed. Sometimes you should be brave enough to show them the real shit. The world needs a warning. This is the truth, you need to know it, it is you, it is me, you better listen.
It is the changing diapers of a teenager who got pregnant at the age of 16 who's crying herself to sleep because of her belly stretch marks and the youth she can't enjoy. It is the moment when you felt alone inside a huge crowd you're forcing to fit it. It is the time you lost your job in an inappropriate age when you needed it most to feed your children and send them in school.
It is the famine and flood. It is the story behind the person who puts the communion wafer on your tongue. It is the void in your chest after a break up with your long term relationship. It is the 3am scene that you're awake and trying to mess with your head with the realizations of how awful you turned out. It is the people you see on subways, the people who serve your fast food, not ugly, not pretty, but true.
It is the best friend who jerk off into a riff all of a sudden. It is the jealousy and the desperation. It is the moment your sex have ended, both of you are sweating and you hated each other that you can't look straight into his/her eyes. It is the awkward crooked teeth that showed up on your high school year book photo. It is the day you run for a public toilet seat to release your load and there's no thing to wipe off your grease.
It is the traffic jam with the saddest song on the radio. It is the night you lost your wallet on the side street asking for help yet everyone is busy trying to pretend they didn't see what happened. It is the blind man on the foot bridge who's not eligible to get hired in a discriminating workforce but also have eaten his breakfast 2 days ago. It is the hardest part that you miss your mom and her hug is the only thing you need to pacify the storm inside. It is the anger you can't release and the forced smile you show to act mature in front of your boss.
It is the uneven skin tone on your arms, the sliding soap when you take a bath, the flaky dandruff, the overloaded elevator, the poured coffee on your white shirt, the failing grade, the underwear stucked in between your butt cheeks, the bad hair days, the wrong choices, the days you're alone and lonely at the same time, the outrageous childhood trauma, the cold, the sickness, the disease and death.
Art is the bad feeling. Yet at the end of the day you still choose to live. You still choose to believe that life is beautiful.
Words by; Avis Lopez
Artwork by; Lexis Gabrielle
YOU ARE READING
•/p ò e m s/•
Poetrya pòem/ poiēma is a piece of writing that partakes of the nature of both speech and song that is nearly always rhythmical, usually metaphorical, and often exhibits such formal elements as meter, rhyme, and stanzaic structure. it is something that ar...
