I’m trying to write down a song

But the notes and the lyrics are wrong

Now I can’t remember

What line was my ender

But somehow it just got too long

Creativity lives in the mind

In dark corners it’s harder to find

But if you bring light then

You’ll get the words right and

You’ll see where before you were blind

But if all our art is too happy

Our love songs are mushy and sappy

Describing a girl

Makes the audience hurl

And the critics get queasy and snappy

Art should be miserable then

The endless conundrum of men

When life is too bare

We feel we must share

So the artist emotes with her pen

The art becomes moving and raw

Exaggerates every last flaw

We run out of time

In the name of the rhyme

Where is the border we draw

And how can we write about death

If we still have at least one more breath

Describing the stake

Would be blatantly fake

So we see through the eyes of Macbeth

Flames and hot coals heat desire

Nothing sparks thoughts like a fire

But just Robert burns

And we must take turns

Using life and not death to inspire

Neither Hemingway’s shots of vernacular

Nor Woolf’s rivers of words were piacular

Sylvia’s dead

But like Robin said

You must make your life spectacular

Art is the speech of the free

And no, it is not killing me

If I can’t use words

Throw myself to the birds

Or perish at least from ennui.