I am no artist

I will be damned if I am called an artist one more time;

never in my life have I found real appreciation for paintings

nor the poems I am required to read to get my bachelors degree

that most likely won’t help me get out of crippling debt that I

will eventually chalk as a loss.

If not an artist, what am I?

I’ve been writing since eleven and have the work to show it, so am I a writer?

I drew a piss poor stick figure comic of Hungry Man, so am I a comic book artist?

I was born privileged but spend time on the street with people who have no home, so am I denying my homefulness?

I deny my body certain opiates but indulge in other opiates, so am I still sober?

I’m a walking skeleton who's come to the realization that my existence is futile and life is mundane, so how can I feel alive again?

I can feel a civil war brewing and am afraid of it's arrival, so how can I call myself a revolutionary?

How can I call myself stable if I stay up at night, panicking over situations that have gone and passed?

How am I supposed to live and provide when my paycheck goes towards my vices that fuel me on my twenty minute late SEPTA train commute?

Tell me how the hell I am supposed to live while others suffer at the hands of the wicked that plunges that dirty needle into your vains.

How can a man be born, live a life with loving parents, go through their life only to taint the life of another.

It is hard to see the hope among the hopeless.