They come out crying, kicking and
screaming, and you have to teach them to be nice.
You try to teach them to be nice, teach
them manners and how to behave in public. They ignore everything you
tell them.
So you hold them down, smack them
sometimes, even though everyone knows you shouldn't, but what else
can you do? They fight back and spit in your face.
And on the rare occasion that they do
as they are told you realise that it's ugly- this thing you've forced
them to do and you have to go back to letting them run barefoot on
the asphalt even though there might be broken glass or used syringes
lying about.
They grow up. They don't feel like
yours anymore. They have life, they live and breathe and you give
them away- to other people. You put your name on them. Sometimes you
give them your voice. Sometimes you give them somebody else's voice.
Sometimes they don't need to speak at all.
And after a while you can step back and
look at them. And it may feel like creating them was a mistake, an
accident. And they might look beautiful. And it might be like looking
in a mirror when the shower has been running too long with out the
fan on- through the steam you can see yourself and it's
uncomfortable, is my nose that big? My hair that limp? But you can't
look away- is that really me?
You make all these things and call them
poems or stories or scripts or art. And maybe you make people laugh,
and maybe you make them cry and maybe you just make them forget about
the dishes or the shoes that have holes in their soles or the fact
that everything is just so hard sometimes.
You make things because you can, and
because you can't not make them. And you shouldn't stop. Not. Ever.
