Poems don’t pay the bills

I lay here, feeling.

A writer.

A writer, they call me.

Why don’t you write for pay?

Sell your art,

Sell your,

Sell.

What are you going to do with that?

How are you going to afford, make money -

Heaven to Betsy what if she just needs to learn, learn and teach, for the sake of teaching and learning.

Heaven forbid I simply exist to create.

Can that not be enough?

How utterly useless to be an artist with no tangible muse.

Meandering intellect

What a waste of energetic space and time to be an artist, to be passion bound by her own overthinking

Drowning in the privilege of intelligence,

A mind that never

Shuts

The

Fuck

Up.

Until filled with dopamine.

The deeply insane oscillations between lover and sinner

Joyous and tear soaked

There is no average overwhelm,

Only deep and static undertaking, like a tides briny undertow

Oceans of sadness

Threaten to spill over the tight lipped edge and drown me every time I stay still

Swallowed up by the generational grief of my mother’s mother’s mother.

I don’t know if it will ever go away, but it can become something I can live with, always

On the

Brink

Of

Overwhelm.

I freeze and lay in the sun, praying for melting.

— go get a real job