An ode to shitty poetry

The art I make is bad

But I make it still the same, and this alone is okay

At least I know it, right?

It is self awareness that makes this okay outwardly

At least I know that I cannot express myself, after all

At least I am grounded in reality

Of course I envy those good poets, who know just what to say

About all of their own

Terrible, shitty emotions

In beautiful, organized notes and rhymes

Granted, maybe I just do not know myself well enough yet

But maybe I just do not exist in the way I hope I do

Maybe inside me there is a person with nothing to say at all

But I would know that, right?

The only thing I have going for myself

Is the prospect of working to know myself

And all of my flaws

Yet it seems the closer I look, the less I see

So maybe I should quit while I'm ahead

And sing my odes to shitty poetry, because, it seems

No matter how much I try to know what is in the mirror

Or make pretty words rhyme

I can never change the fact

That behind every stroke of the brush

Is a small, naked man who cannot say the things that he feels

Or even succeed at faking it