Humans love art. Creativity is a way to express emotions and thoughts. The following poems deal with themes such as the pain of trying to be original, the healing power of art, the ownership of art, and the pros and cons of being consumed by one’s own imagination.
Original
Oh,
the dark, stormy night.
So boring.
We’ve seen this:
werewolves, vampires...
and the artist.
Suffering from
heavy emotions,
laying on the floor,
listening to the storm howling.
Crying, dying inside, alone.
I am bored.
I’m in a dying need
of something new,
something exciting,
something no one
has ever done before.
Here,
in the dark,
not in the spotlight,
the artist uses their flashlight
to open their flask.
I erase the last line.
An alcoholic artist?
What a stereotype!
I open my bottle, take a gulp.
Maybe a drink helps me think,
I miss the link,
not in sync with my brain,
they need more, more,
drain out your juices,
reinvent the wheel,
they’ll want more.
You don’t own art
I held up my brush
and brushed away,
at the painted sea was a ship
that sailed away. At bay,
I’d painted away my tainted
emotions, wishing
the artwork to
be there, to hold me,
to make me survive
the depths
of my sea.
It thought otherwise.
Flopping down
to the ground
my painting grew feet.
Daring to dart,
it left with a clefted
frame, sticking out
its tongue, just for me,
for the memory
of its birth mom,
who’d carried it around
in her womb, ached, shrieked,
left weak. I had hoped
it would be here,
to take care of me.
It thought otherwise.
Packing its stuff, not much:
ambition, hunger, cravings
of something other than me,
other universe, perhaps
a degree in a university. It packed
its frame and a spare one,
a fancier one just in case of
fancier frame occasions.
With all this in a suitcase
it leaped through the window.
A plane ticket to the world
hidden behind the pocket
of my child’s canvas.
“Watch out for the pickpockets!”
I had told it, and it had listened.
Well, once. Hooray.
The next time I heard
of my child was
one morning.
Its face on the paper, smiling,
wedded to a girl of its dreams:
a Marionette. Together,
they’d blended and mixed,
transfixed was its heart,
its canvas, my canvas, my skin,
through and through and from within,
its soul now hers, not mine.
I broke through my pain,
baked another child.
When it was born, soft tunes,
merry tones, its sinews and bones,
all mine. “I’ll treat you better,”
I promised, and I did.
I was its owner.
It thought otherwise.
The words
They are there,
they are raw,
they hurt.
And I clung to them.
I breathe, and drink
and live
those words.
And still they cut.
So deep it hurts,
so deep it bleeds.
It’s cleansing.
It is a purge,
throwing up words
on paper.
I feel light, intoxicated
and cleaned, all at once.
You never know
The things you come up with.
Walking outside, planting seeds
in the ground at your
grandfather’s farm. They float,
they flee. They see you
and stick to you. You forget them.
You come up with better ideas.
You come up with worse.
They take you,
from this sofa to another.
From this table to a universe,
very far from here. Where
flowers grow in trees and
the sky is a lake and the lake
is the sky.
And you float. Through it all.
In between time,
and space, and physics,
and metaphors.
And you’re there
and you’re here. At least sometimes.
Most times,
you’re stuck in the middle.
And then, when things
get hard, you want
to quit. Because it’s tiring,
being here and being there and
being somewhere in between.
But the thing is,
you never know. Never
know what you figure
out about flying
seals with bumblebee riders
when you sit
in maths class and hope
to escape.
But then again,
you never know.
Once you’re there,
in Neverland, in Narnia,
you might realise something
just as valuable
about here.
Teksti: Annukka Mäkeläinen
Kuvat: Annukka Mäkeläinen
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