To My Fellow Artist | Teen Ink

To My Fellow Artist

August 3, 2013
By TurabianKnight BRONZE, Bronx, New York
TurabianKnight BRONZE, Bronx, New York
4 articles 0 photos 6 comments

Favorite Quote:
"We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid." -- Ben Franklin


You scream and bash your head against the imported marble floor, from...somewhere -
Africa? Once it was washed red with Zimbabwean blood
but now it shines and sometimes you check your reflection in it; not today.
"Nothing," you scream, "empty".
You are detoxified and polished with upper-class Clorox.
"I’ve been anesthetized" you choke but
you are wrong; you sense this:
your struggle is that you are wealthy and
you are straight and
both of your parents went to Ivy-league schools and
you are white, so
you can never lay claim to the nobility of suffering; of defiant success. But
you open your eyes and notice how arrestingly cold the floor is
how barren and desolate the desert looms
how awesome echo the cerebral screams of men dying in endless war. So.
You pick and choose (you learned young to be a connoisseur) and
dirty your white canvass with
the guilt coalescing deep beneath her hooded eyes,
the tattered edges of her fingernails
just visible beneath chipped paint (A Pop of Cherry Red), and
you fill in black for the parts of her rendered invisible by averted eyes.
Now you shove your soggy canvass in my face because
"there is darkness out there beyond the whitewashed pale" and
"I want you to feel what she has been through!"
You form a blunt club of the acid sluicing through her arteries,
with which you bash me repeatedly on the head.
You say "if there is pain, let us share it," but
all we share is a dull thudding within my skull. And then
you ask me for fifty K because
this is
Art.


The author's comments:
I was once at a meeting of a literary magazine where we read a poem which the author wrote about how they couldn't make art because they hadn't suffered enough yet. They seemed to think that art was only pain, which annoyed me because that makes artists commemorators of pain, which is not what I want to be. This is a response to that poem

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This article has 4 comments.


midnightwoah said...
on Aug. 31 2013 at 9:14 am
midnightwoah, Monett, Missouri
0 articles 0 photos 188 comments

Favorite Quote:
"We accept the love we think we deserve." -Stephen Chbosky

TMI means too much information.

on Aug. 30 2013 at 8:42 pm
TurabianKnight BRONZE, Bronx, New York
4 articles 0 photos 6 comments

Favorite Quote:
"We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid." -- Ben Franklin

Oh i do. Keep and eye out 'cuz they're coming :)  btw, is TMI short for something...?

midnightwoah said...
on Aug. 30 2013 at 1:35 pm
midnightwoah, Monett, Missouri
0 articles 0 photos 188 comments

Favorite Quote:
"We accept the love we think we deserve." -Stephen Chbosky

TMI. I really could imagine everything you wrote. Kinduf demented but that just how I like it. I hope u write some creepy short stories!

x_rbdf GOLD said...
on Aug. 29 2013 at 5:19 pm
x_rbdf GOLD, Augusta, Georgia
17 articles 1 photo 47 comments

Favorite Quote:
He who faces give no light shall never become a star

This Is More Than Amazing !!! I almost cried for some reson Lol ... Soo Deep. Like I loved how you talked about race And Im black Soo I felt you On that .... I Love It Keep Writting