We Are Starving, But We Are Artists

We are the deranged ones.

They call us crazy because we are passionate,
unstable because we live paycheck to paycheck
absurd because we refuse to work a 9-5

we are so invested in our craft that we couldn’t imagine our lives
any other way
we slit our wrists just to write our words in blood
we suffocate ourselves on nooses just to paint the light we saw
we ingest toxins just so we can dream in color

we are crazy
but we are so vividly alive

we are so much more carefree than those
who see themselves in money
we are so much more happy
than those who eat feasts for all meals
we are so much more loving
than those who have only found one word for love

we breathe in our work
and we breathe out happiness.

we are so in tune with the world and the world sings back to us
it sings to us through our pencils, our paintbrushes, our instruments, our film
it write us notes and it colors our canvases

our lives are so desperate, and we are always hungry
we are hungry, craving for more in life
we are satisfied from the emotions we experience
rather than the fullness we feel after dinner

we sacrifice our personal lives to share our
memories with anyone who wants to witness
there are traces of us all around the world,
in the back alleys we graffitied,
in the hotel paper on which we wrote the first line to our novel
in the painting hanging in a Parisian coffee shop where we last left it
in the hearts and the minds of the people we have loved
and this alone keeps us alive

some may think we are starving

but we are artists.

we are always content,
content with consuming life.