i cant explain the way my desire to do art eeks out of my body. sometimes im in tears, i dont know what to do, or how to do it, but i have this passion exploding from my pores, and i dont know how to harness it, or how to be productive with it.

sometimes i just want someone to tell me what to do, but then i also get so scared. i have nothing to offer but myself. i have no money, so that means i have no way of funding myself and nothing but blood , sweat, and tears to give, and that i will give, but i dont know how to prove it.

can hard work & determination really pay off in this industry, i believe it does and it will, i just need to find out who will give me a chance to prove myself. or where i can begin to create this space, and then the fear of failure starts to creep in, now more than it ever has before, which is so strange to me, because my confidence has always been my claim to fame, my advantage over others. ive never sat around before and wondered if i was enough, not that i can remember anyway. and now i wonder if i am enough.

how do i market myself? when dont yet have a resume to prove it, and that is what i need to start working on now, and i feel so late in the game.

so now i have to work harder, write more emails, contact more people, try that much harder, i need to create a space for myself, even if it seems room for one doesnt exist.

today i saw a pale yellow house with a purple door

today i saw a pale yellow house with a purple door

but i felt so much

a tear rolled down my cheek as i wondered

i wondered about that door and what it meant to the person who had painted it

people move in and out

they come and go

time passes

some are welcomed into doors with opened arms

others yelled out of doors

"don't let it hit you on the way out"

i look up at you standing heavy leaden with suitcases in the doorway

looking at me timidly

tentatively

unsure of what my response to you will be

in my mind i meet you in airports

making movie like scenes where people stop and think of how beautiful we are

touched by the contagiousness of our joy

a heeled foot perhaps or a sneaker, pops up in the air

as a bag is dropped down to the ground to relieve a heavy laden hand

my fingers intertwine with empty air

wondering if that is even what i really want

if its what i've ever wanted

if i ever will

your smile in my doorway is what i think i want

but you're a chesire cat

wonderful to be with

but its so dreadful when you are missing

and i wander alone on dark paths

thinking about the joy that they could bring

i walk barefooted, feeling the roots of trees through soft forest mud

i wiggle my toes in warm beach sand

i slide them under your body on the couch

you know my toes get cold

i see your body fading and your smile in the doorway

your chinky eyes fade slowly

and your smile now leers at me

mocking my naivete

i'm on kayak again

ever disappointed at the price of plane tickets

thinking about what it would take for me to get to you

where i would take you

where i might find you

what you look like now

snow whips around outside

i play with opacity in my mind

deciding how much of a wall it creates

how much i can see through

how soundproof it is

how well i can see you approaching through it

trudging through the snow towards me

sitting in a pale yellow house

a purple door painted with love

Molting Grace

The problem with having a split personality is that you know that as soon as everything is going right, something will go wrong.

Split personalities,

trusting in God,

having faith and hope and knowing that by his grace I can do all things,

When things go wrong I get so down inside,

so confused, so unable to cope but only because

I can’t get myself quite where I need to be intellectually.

Why does my own intellect get me down?

Maybe ignorance is bliss,

and I need to stop looking down and around at the people and the situations that make me stop and think.

All I wanna do with my life is make you stop and think,

I think,

that’s what I say,

I do truly aspire to inspire, but I get lost along the way.

Other things pop up, I get stressed, I see bright lights,

I wonder if I should just do what I’m good at to get this bread, and get ahead,

or at least get out,

get out of these school loans and this cage of anxiety that I trap myself into based on the fact that I don’t know what I want to do with my life.

I’m young, they say

the world is yours, they say

you are blessed and talented and beautiful,

and I know I am lucky to have the encouragement,

they say you can be successful.

These are the words that the little kids that I want to inspire need to hear,

the words that never reach their little ears

and so they see themselves as lumps of black coal without personality and value,

til they throw on bright kicks, learn to jerk or drop it low,

they wiggle with it and see that their lumps are in fact flexible,

see they can be a gangster or reinterpret the word ho, but fuck it,

cuz they’re just getting that money.

And I have all the words in the world,

to try to tell them to slow down,

to look inside, to realize the talent that they have,

to be something, something wonderful,

I want them to give their best selves to the world.

And I have all the words,

and yet for me these same words I want to pass to them create a pressure cooker,

and I drown inside them, water boiling up around me,

a bright future shoving its letters into my nostrils and making it hard to breathe.

I am gasping for air in a world that threatens to suffocate me

because of all of its great expectations.

I am the only one that doesn’t see them, or I do,

but now I am a lump of clay terrified of being molded into the wrong image,

being a beautiful statue that represents nothing, but is powerful.

Or being plastacine,

never ever taking a final form,

I’m a chameleon, just adapting to anything but not having anything that speaks of home, that helps me take my final form.

I am molting,

which just means my skin is fucking falling off and my soft wet red bleeding insides are left pulsing,

exposed to the world, to the dirt of it,

the sting of hot air full of other people’s breathe and bacteria,

whipping against the sinewy muscles of my neck, my shoulders, my back, infecting me. And this hazardous situation doesn’t seem to have a way out.