I like to do this thing
where I pretend
that my surroundings are a metaphor
for my experiences.
This led me to a time
where I parked my car in my building’s lot
and just sat in the driver’s seat
for an hour
watching the glimmering raindrops lash at the windshield
and slowly glide down the glass
as the tempestuous gales
howled around me,
thinking about all the times
that I have been sad:
the death of my childhood dog,
the end of a relationship,
my grandmother’s stroke
that robbed her of her ability
to communicate.
“If only someone could see me right now,
if only someone knew what I am doing,”
I thought,
“then they would know
that I am a TRUE ARTIST.”
I’ve always admired those artists,
those poets, those authors,
those painters and performers,
who suffer for their art,
who make their art their suffering,
who live and breathe and die
for their art.
I want to be like them.
But coming out of that moment,
knowing that I had wasted an hour
just to pat myself on the back
about its metaphorical resonance,
I realized that I wasn’t doing it
for the right reasons.
I am vain.
A TRUE ARTIST is their art.
They don’t have to pretend
to be this thing
they are not.
I want to force myself into the box
of an artist,
and that’s not glamorous or avant-garde;
it’s pretentious.
I’m pretentious.
I hope you can forgive me.
Photo by Valeriia Miller from Pexels
Happy first day of National Poetry Month, everyone! To celebrate, I am going to be posting a poem here on my blog every Monday, and I will have a short poem up on my Instagram every day except Mondays. Most of these posts have already been scheduled, so I am hopeful that even as life gets crazy hectic again soon, I will be able to follow through on this promise.
On a different note, I have a different domain now! One without the .wordpress! I am super excited for the future of this blog and my other poetry endeavors, which I will reiterate in my 100th post on this blog, which will also be coming up this month. April will be a whirlwind, but I’m so happy you are here to share it with me.
Peace out!
-Joy
The Yellow Brick Ave 
Beautifully penned ❤️💕
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Thank you!
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Congratulations on your new domain and upcoming milestone 💚
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Thanks so much!
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Most welcome.
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Loved this. Very honest and very relatable. Congrats on the domain too. 👍
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Thank you so much, Tom!
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Nothing to forgive. A lovely moment captured. Art comes in any form, even the transient moment 💕
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Thanks for your encouragement!
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“I want to force myself into the box/of an artist” Once again…..that’s me….ahhhh!! lol you’ve done it again Joy, spoke my words before I dared utter them. I enjoy reading your work. Thanks for the inspiration, encouragement and courage.
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Thank you for reading and commenting on my work! I truly appreciate your attention to my messages, and it’s nice to know that a fellow writer experiences so many of the same feelings that I do.
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Some things you do because it feels good or through it you relive memories of the past. When it rains, I sit on a window sill and watch rain from window. It makes me feel good, but makes me sad also.
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This is a very honest post. As an aspiring author who would like to write books as good as the Harry Potter series, I too have sat and daydreamed. Not exactly about the same things. Mine were mostly about ending up on TV or seeing my book in bookstores etc. But the point is I think we all feel that desire of wanting people to **know** (couldn’t put it in italics so that’s what the asterisks are for) we’re something. I’ve had those moments too, when I realize that I should really be after the feelings of success rather than the feelings of fame. I think the thing we so often miss is that so long as **we** know we’re artists/poets/performers/whatever, it doesn’t matter what everyone else thinks.
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