deepundergroundpoetry.com

You’re an Artist

Beauty is thee
And weird is me.
Lovely is he
And soil is free
When you’re dead.
A writer’s well-read
And a hack is just read.
And forgot. I’m bled,
You bleed.
Mine is plastic,
Yours is reed.
 
You're an artist. When you were born, it was in a room painted eggshell-white, with sailboats and teddy bears on the wainscoting. Your mother let you loose in the garden as soon as you could crawl and you interacted with butterflies, chubby little fingers and eyes filled with wonder probing the complex beauty of their insectoid architecture. As you grew you developed a fascination with trees and rivers and poems by the great lyricists. You brought no book but wallowed in the green grasses each Saturday. Your first ambition was to be William Wordsworth.
 
I'm a hack. When I was born, it was in a hospital room, to a mother who resented being called "mum" by the nurse. As I grew I developed my life-long taste for red meat. When asked to be creative I wrote a story about garrotting that was quickly red-pencilled: "POSSIBLE SOCIOPATH". (Okay, I exaggerate, which is also why I'm a hack.) I hated being taken for bike rides in the countryside and tried very hard to bring a book everywhere. I liked comfortable rooms and chairs and not having to do much at all. I watched cartoons. My first ambition was to be somewhere else.
 
You, on the other hand, are an artist. You glided through school untroubled by its walls and class systems, friend to all and bully to none, always friendly and quick and charming. You dazzled your teachers and walked home across the playing fields feeling held by the sun. You loved the outdoors and in summer would only go home to eat dinner and sleep, though you loved spending time with nan and granddad. Your ambition was to write sonnets that when performed would make the hearers laugh and cry; at once, even.
 
I, however, am a hack. I’d come home and watch TV for hours, or read crime novels alone in my room, or learn about true crime. I read and read and read, but nothing light or spiritual. I snivelled and would not play football. ‘You don’t like anything that needs effort’ my grandmother once said. I also didn’t like learning new things or spending time with new people. My ambition was to write detective novels, about vicious murders in lovely places. Beatings in Leamington spas, knifings in Covent Garden, a Monte Carlo massacre.
 
You’re an artist because your heart is fulfilled upon spotting a Penguin Classic. You like covers that utilise high art and photography. Women at a tea-table two hundred years ago, a marketplace in modern Calcutta, a farmer tilling an idyllic landscape.
 
I’m a hack because I collect books with lurid pulp covers. I salivate at images of Conan the Barbarian with wenches by his throne, crypt-keepers and witches, anything macabre or occult.
 
You’re an artist because your taste is not just good, but ethical.
 
I’m a hack because I still consume work by craftsmen exposed as torturers and fiends.
 
In the land of fantasies you sprawl in a meadow, a comma in the language of flowers, writing on embossed paper with a fountain pen.
 
In the land of fantasies I thrash the dusty concave keys of a typewriter, in a grotty old flat which filters the light into a melancholic grey.
 
Beauty is thee
And weird is me.
Lovely is he
And soil is free
When you’re dead.
A writer’s well-read
And a hack is just read.
And forgot. I’m bled,
You bleed.
Mine is plastic,
Yours is reed.
Written by The_Silly_Sibyl (Jack Thomas)
Published | Edited 27th Mar 2021
Author's Note
The structure of this is taken from one of my favourite poems, You’re Beautiful by Simon Armitage: https://poetryarchive.org/poem/youre-beautiful/ For a long time I’ve wanted to do a poem on the same theme and in that back-and-forth style and, well, this is what I’ve managed.
All writing remains the property of the author. Don't use it for any purpose without their permission.
likes 2 reading list entries 0
comments 2 reads 245
Commenting Preference: 
The author encourages honest critique.

Latest Forum Discussions
COMPETITIONS
Today 4:56am by NANCY_RDZ_STORIES
SPEAKEASY
Today 4:15am by Grace
SPEAKEASY
Today 3:33am by DCLXVI_1989
COMPETITIONS
Today 00:41am by Louismatteo349
SPEAKEASY
Yesterday 11:19pm by Ahavati
POETRY
Yesterday 11:05pm by Grace