Poems of a Lost Girl

I want to Write

I want to write,

I want to pour my life into art,

I want to create something so desperately to put myself apart from all the rest,

I want to be the best.

The finest young scholar,

the next Banksy with honors,

I wanted a roll that would put me above the rest,

I want to make movements,

I want to spark protests,

I want to encapsulate my soul in every piece until my dying breath.

To be an artist,

Is to pursue a thankless life,

Full of minimum wage jobs,

Hardships and strife

“I am an artist!”

I scream into the silent night,

There is but only a street light,

Shining bright to hear my pleas in the dead of night.

“I am an artist” I whisper quietly alone,

No one is home,

Doubled over in tears, no one is here

My voice is sincere as I recite my poems.

“I am an artist” I shamefully confess,

Wearing my Sunday best,

My potential employer is not impressed

Just as my math teacher  wasn't in 10th grade,

Not unlike the principle in 11th when she held my papers to sign as I humbly resigned ending my education because I had fallen so far behind.

I am a disgrace to my parents

For i am no doctor!

I will never be a scholar,

Successful or honored!

But I can encapsulate the disappointment on their faces with a DW2 and a few spare pages because I am an artist and my work will not live through the ages.

I will never be taught in history class,

I will be instead forever exiled and outcast because my line of work and expertise means nothing to a capitalist economy.

I am the predecessor of an intrusive anomaly that people were meant to do more than go to school, work, pay bills and die.

My ancestors believed that we are creatures to be at peace, to create and worship not just entrepreneurs building warships.

I didn't choose to be this way, it isn't my fault that my brain was crafted to illustrate not divide and find the latitude of a triangle that serves absolutely no purpose in real life.

We enforce that There is but one way to succeed but there are many ways to plant your seed in someone's mind, to stick with them forever,

You take us with you wherever you are, you are reminded of us when you touch the spine of an old boobook

Hear wind chimes sing and watch clouds rush past stars.

We are your childhood memories,

The first book you picked up and couldn't put down,

The first song you heard that made your hair stick up,

The picture that changed how you look at flowers,

The painting that showed you a different side of life,

The poem that put into words all the emotions you were feeling

We are the backbone of our society, the architects who crafted your cities,

The authors that changed you life,

The artists that decorate your house,

The writers that entertain your children.

We are the blood pulsing through your veins that you are so repulsed by, we are what keeps you alive but you would be happier if we were never brought into the light.

And I am one of them,

I am an artist!

I will survive but I will spend thousands of nights telling myself that I am not good enough,

I am an artist

I will be unemployed half my life,

And miserable for the rest,

I will get turned down for jobs I am more than qualified for because I chose self expression to decorate my hair and skin.

I will be looked down on by my peers because in my teenage years I couldn't do the math assignments that “were so easy,”

Instead I excelled in English, but what good does that do for me?