Every single school day
starts out the very same way:
travel, schoolwork, tests, clubs, chores
with no spaces in between.
No time to ignore the clock,
have fun, do something really enjoyable.
Friends get pushed away to second place.
Thinking about life, to third.
Stuyvesant students become robots,
with good programming, excellent memory
and I’m one of them, though a little different.
I live my life looking through a lens.
An artist’s lens, with too much focus.
I observe everything as a potential painting.
Eye the light coming through the window
and its affect on people’s faces during physics.
Work on my shading during math.
When my lens captures something for a painting,
my artist’s mind starts working:
Which medium should I use?
Charcoal for serious portraits,
Oil for all the beautiful colors,
Watercolor for a dreamy atmosphere,
or, maybe, a mixture?
In my head, I see a complete work,
know where the colored brushstrokes go.
This is an ongoing process,
though the result rarely gets on canvas,
since I need to continue being the robot,
despite the error in my programming.
For creating art is deemed “not useful”
and becoming an artist, “unsuccessful.”