Poems about creativity and art

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.

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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.

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Teksti: Annukka Mäkeläinen Kuvat: Annukka Mäkeläinen