A Poem About Why I Love Artists

I fall for her understanding,
the reality of her real,
her effortless authenticity, 
her disregard for compromise,
the way she makes me truly feel…

…naive, as if this reprieve were mutual.
Cause when the track stops,
and the stage is struck,
and the house lights and music team up to together make their nightly eviction,

She is still ideal,
but I am estranged.

It’s so bad and sad that this singer’s songs seduce.
But it sure is good to dive into being alive,
and let my preoccupied mind dissolve in its surrender to her movement.

‘Cause even if the energy and chemistry both have to leave me,
the journey she gave to we was still genuine.

And then again, in the end,
is there anything that isn’t fleeting,
that isn’t constantly peacing?

No…

No, her performance isn’t evenly slightly cruel.
Its nature is shared with soul.

It’s a lesson for us that are willing to learn,
that for there to be beauty, that beauty must eventually burn.
Better that than rust.

But I trust that her cooperation in our congregation was more than just vocation.
I have to believe that, because when I try to decipher these artist’s motivations,
I picture myself writing creations.

And I’m not trying to arrogantly compare her talent to me.
All I’m saying is that I realize that there’s a process in getting from A to B.
I used to think that this routine diluted art’s authenticity,
that if you massaged and manicured your performance, 
contemplated its quality, you removed its spontaneity, 
and thus its claim to being more than just a shadow cast through some cave’s window pane.

But I don’t think that anymore.
It’s egotistical and infantile,
to assume that for one to be “in the moment”
you have to be both witty and impulsive, 
is imbecile.

Instead, I think it takes faith on both sides,
faith that this crowd really is magic,
faith that her words really do describe our lives.

But prior to that, there’s work to be done,
there’s hard effort to be made,
difficult personal and logistical battles to be won,
and sometimes that’s not so fun, but she does it anyway,
so don’t always be ready to run for the gun or the rum,
cause, whether you realize it or not, her dedication to you
is more like that of a nun than a bum.

And it’s not measured by her ability to remember a name or an age,
the game doesn’t scale that way from her side of the stage.
Twenty cities, thirty days; just enough time to do her thing,
get paid, and hopefully laid.

But what I’m referring to isn’t perversion, it’s intimacy; 
where longevity is traded for intensity.
That fire that leaves you weak in the knees,
with no voice left, 
and barely your breath.

See, it be death to not give her one more ole.
Because what she does for us — what she does for me — is just as important as what the sun does day to day.
Yea, at the end of the show, we’ve both got it pretty made.