You know you're an artist/writer when you are upset as fuck and you use words to convey your frustration and sadness, hammer out the disjointed tunes on your keyboard or speak in run-on sentences that seem almost poetic.

Heck, I get poetic when I'm upset, and I don't know why.

An inspirational poem I'm planning to stick under my desk came out. If it's good enough I'll move it to the gallery. Yes, I know you're wincing at how bad it is. I never claimed to be a poet, but a wannabe. Yes, I know the structure is terrible, so help me improve it if you can. So here goes:




I am beautiful.

I am beautiful because I can laugh while crying, and pretend I'm not
although the tears are running down my face and my voice is choked, choked with stillness

still make the most appalling jokes and laugh at them.

I am beautiful because of my too-wide nose and my face
seasoned with wounds of youth, insomnia circles and
bent hands like hooks, poetry is in my bloodstream, in neurotransmitters, and you have to understand that
I am poetry. I live through words.

I am beautiful because I understand the wonders of life people, too absorbed in math and calculations and aspirations of the fuzzy hard-edged futures,
do not stop to p(w)onder.

I am beautiful because I can pair neon green with red,
and still get away with it. Because I know the sky
is not aquamarine or azure
or turquoise or navy
but purple with the humpbacks of waves riding the currents like great fish-emperors.

I am beautiful in my perfect disarray of books and unsorted papers (of which I can still
find miracles, like last year's holiday homework.)
I am beautiful because I dare to eat chocolate even though my legs are too thick and
arms too flabby but most of the time I allow myself to give in
(or is it the other way round?)

I am beautiful because of my half-laugh where I catch my face in the mirror, eyes creased and mouth open; a full-hearted laugh despite my imperfect teeth, laughing and laughing and talking, I sleep and dream and wonder and think, mentally match up the leaves on the ground. Because I like to sit by the windows so I can feel the wind on my face and the sun on the grey world -

and I am beautiful when I cry, even if it is pink and ugly like newborn rats freezing in snow, but
I am beautiful because I am human.
I am beautiful because I love my humanity, love my too-thick thighs and messy desk, the afternoon rain the sun witnesses; warm like a worn-out plushie, love me, because
I am myself.
I am beautiful, because I am myself.
I am. I am.