Hard Work & Warm Water

A painting and its amateur replica
Are most easily differentiated if situated parallel
The strokes are close, but not close enough
The colours are off, the perspective warped
The meant-to-be smiling expressions distort
Like my face in the mirror when I'm deep in thought

Not everyone kept a diary, and yeah, I realised that quite late
You get used to your own bubble and coping mechanisms and frenzied states
Where, amid blurred eye-lash and delayed, emotional whiplash
You see there are words on the page
Characters swirling of their own volition taking centre stage
Running on half-rehearsed monologues
About the playwright's continued discomfort
Towards committing to the one thing they've always wanted to discover

I'm going to write a book! I said, 5 years ago, likely 10 too
But I was at DJCAD and before that, the little favourite of the art department at school
Unexplored novels and untyped diaries were stagnating
I took validation from all that painting
And drawing feverishly
Savouring the portraits with colours placed correctly
And the erratic application across more expressive pieces
Swamped in all the multicoloured endorphins releasing
Hiding the more pervasive, good-student mentality
That swelled up, mouth-open, gaping at the feeder
Waiting for any positive comment from parents, friends and teachers
You get a faster reaction if you show someone a picture
Compared to asking them to read the stories scribbled in your jotter

To enjoy creating art, I feel I must admit
I had to ditch the struggle of trying to monetize it
I feel like I'd been tricked
By voices who never really knew why my art exists
Or why I was drawn to it initially

My dad always said
Why don't you draw something nice
Why don't you draw something happy
As if pondering
Why is it always sad
Or
Why is it always scary
Or weird or lacking
In decency or continuity
Or ability to be hung on someone's office wall or in a post"-Spark-Joy!" Hall
Do another Scotland drawing
What about painting cows
People love seeing highland critters just wandering about on moors
Or hares
Or thistles
Or fucking stags with distant stares
People love displaying pretty animals but
I prefer my beasts with a glare
My art is weird, my art gets strange
And that's not something I'll take offence to you saying
It's expected and recurrent
As for me it's far too easy to turn
A delicate illustration into a perverted mutant

My eyes demand more, the same as ma mouth
I'm pretty reluctant to trim a sentence down
I will ramble and ramble until I pass out
Until I'm out of oxygen and I fall south
But hey... I've never fainted once in my life, so expect to see me around
To hear me hollering loud
My thumping feet mashing up and down
Like seagulls on grassland, I'll be making a vibrating sound
To summon those tasty squirming words up through the ground
And chewing them up and spitting them out
Satisfying little syllables caked around my mouth

I got syllable cake for breakfast

Too many years of being silent, and not talking
Too many years of talking, but not saying anything
In speaking and writing I'm making up for lost time
With every extended, self-gratifying rhyme
And rabid stream-of-consciousness-infected lines
Therapising myself, can you see that outside
Of this odd, flesh being bumbling through life
Stumbling on the ways our stories could align
Excited for solutions we'll inevitably find
That allow us to calm our hyper-stimulated minds

Take a long, deep breath
Watch our crazy worlds combine
In a way that makes me happy
And so overwhelmed at the sublime
And grateful
That with you
I get to share mine