Time

 Maybe I’m ignorant.

Maybe I’m blessed.

Maybe I have everything

and still wake up asking

why the hell I need any of this.

Perhaps I’m narcissistic

for thinking my time is important.

My minutes.

My years.

My songs.

My ridiculous little worlds.

As if the universe

has an appointment with me.

But every morning

I try to make something

that wasn’t here yesterday.

And every morning

the same old depression

gets out of bed with me.

It’s known me since I was a child.

It grew up beside me.

Changed clothes.

Changed names.

Learned new ways

to sit on my chest.

And now there are eyes everywhere.

Watching.

Measuring.

Deciding.

Not so pretty anymore.

Getting old.

Not thin enough.

Too strange.

Too loud.

Too sexual.

Too controversial.

Why would she sing about that?

Why would she paint that?

Why would anyone want

something so unpleasant

hanging on their wall?

👽

I don’t know.

Why do flowers have to be beautiful

but nightmares have to apologize?

My art was never supposed

to match your couch.

I make the things

that crawl out of me.

Sometimes they have teeth.

Sometimes they’re ugly.

Sometimes they whisper things

polite people decided

we shouldn’t say out loud.

And then I wonder

why I’m alone.

That part is almost funny.

I spend my life

refusing to fit inside the room

then wonder why nobody

saved me a chair.

But I cannot fake this.

I tried sanding down the edges.

They grew back.

I tried being easier to understand.

I got bored.

I tried imagining

what everyone might like

and couldn’t recognize myself

inside it.

So here I am.

Older.

Heavier.

Weirder.

Still making shit.

Still singing things

someone will absolutely hate.

Still putting aliens

where flowers were supposed to go.

Still turning depression into sound

because apparently

that’s what my hands know how to do.

I’ve been doing this since 1998.

Before the algorithm.

Before everybody carried

an audience in their pocket.

Before a machine could make a song

before I finished explaining

why I needed to write one.

I was already here.

Making.

Failing.

Changing.

Trying again.

So maybe nobody listens.

Fine.

Maybe three of you do.

Hello, three of you.

You have questionable taste.

I like you already.

Maybe that’s enough.

Not fame.

Not numbers.

Not convincing strangers

that I deserve their attention.

Just making something

that sounds like me

while I’m still here to make it.

I don’t need to be pretty.

I don’t need to be young.

I don’t need to be thin.

I don’t need to become pleasant

just because unpleasant women

make people uncomfortable.

I need to be real.

I need to make what I feel.

I need to look at whatever

is living inside my head

and give the fucking thing a body.

If you hate it,

keep walking.

If you love it,

come closer.

And if there are only three of you

standing there when I’m finished,

then thank you.

I made this for us.