Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

As writers, we are artists, and bound to the same code as artists. Submitted, therefore: as writers, we are artists.

As writers, we are poor, struck with the insufferable abomination of truth which states
You are nothing and have nothing
You will be nothing and not remembered
Your death may or may not be recognized
Your life will be forgotten.
As writers, we know what the definition of perfect is
We know it is a ludicrous goal and yet
As writers we strive and pant and bleed and die because
We house inside us the need to change something
As writers we know what is and what was and what will be
We can see and interpret and communicate
Universal truths made impossible to understand by
Contemptuous, contemptible human beings who
Refuse. A lot.
We are the keepers of the Word and it seems to me
As writers we are gods but as artists we are ants because
We all want to be Da Vinci and Asimov and Van Gogh and Paine but
As artists we know that it is not our brilliance but
A chance miracle which displays and records
What on the inside all true artists feel and breathe because
Beyond us and within in us lay about not in circles or shapes but
Amorphously strewn across our surface like black holes in the stars
Snakes who are willing to display to the masses that
SALVATION IS NOW but
We are the bringers of salvation
As writers we are martyrs and saviors and
We know that the only way through the desert is forty years long if only
Some Moses would start the journey and we know that
Though crows fall from the sky, we will most surely die
Eating freely given meat. but
As artists we are capable and murderous but
Too respectful of the human life we paint
To snuff it out and
Too respectful of all prophets' potential for light
Because we hope
And lost hope is only a mask behind which hide people for
Whom so much has been lost and so little has been seen but even so
They're chasing fireflies like the rest of us
In dark alleys at night
. I think I see it
Blink out
. I grab for it
Blink in
. It wasn't there
Blink out
. I lunge for it
Blink in
. It wasn't there like perfection, a mockery
Blink out
. I calculate a trajectory
Blink in
. Like hope it appears briefly just to
Blink out
. So that I miss again and I can't
Blink in
Because I don't want to close my hands around light.
Perfection is a will o' the wisp dancing in moonlight just out of reach
Until it trips us over a scythe and we realize
We've been chasing air and now
Death is laughing at us
What did we accomplish?
As writers we did nothing
Forty years was never started because of
False prophets
As writers we
Passed on everything we knew because we thought maybe, one day,
Maybe it could be enough to say what we wanted to say
. but now the blackness is biting me
One day, humankind, someone set foot in a desert!
And when you see manna fall from heaven
Thank the gods that wrote it and
Black birds in prophetic flocks can't feed you; watch out for murder in the ink
. something is fading and I can't find my pen
Remember when you were alone in your apartment and the lights went out and you didn't have anything to write on AS A WRITER you realized that walls are canvas and your palm is a palette and you don't have a pen but your finger is straight and you don't have ink but damn it, blood stains, too! As a writer you found a way to scrawl your message to the world as you died because they wouldn't respect you enough to leave you a line to bread for the day and said, "Why don't you write some from rocks?" and you said, "Don't test the Scribe to do what is not needed" because you knew you could get if you pleaded but you cannot beg for life only for light and you've been sitting there screaming that light for so long but no one would dare set foot in a desert with someone as ravenous for truth as you because they couldn't see fireflies
As a writer you saw fireflies
As a writer you saw fireflies
As a writer you saw fireflies...

And you ate locusts...

And you wore camel hair...
Because you believed in a savior and
. the light doesn't... really blink like a firefly...
does it? it looks more like a tunnel... I
breathe in
as writers we were dreamers and pursuers of beauty
breathe out
we chased fireflies and will o' the wisps
breathe in blink in
if only some people were thirsty enough
breathe out
to chase water for forty years
breathe in
in a desert
breathe out
again.
blink out




I think I could submit this as a slam if I reworded some stuff. Right now, it rambles a little bit and "amorphous" is a little awkward to actually say out loud. I need to organize some metaphors and be more consistent with some things but right now I need to get to sleep so I can work tomorrow.