What is it about
Struggle
That makes art
Authentic?
About bleakness
That makes a story more
Vivid?
Art and despair
Have a strange relationship,
As though certain treasures
Can only be hewn
Out of the artist’s
Distress.
It is certainly possible
To make things that are
Wonderful
In the absence of disaster,
Yet there is something about
Heartbreak
Devastation
And depravity
That sweetens the pen
Of the ready writer
And sharpens the mind
Of the brooding creative.
Perhaps it serves as consolation
For having suffered,
Some sort of special endowment
Reserved for those that
Have tasted dust;
The tree of life
After Hope has been
Deferred.

Go write.

Hope deferred makes the heart sick
But a longing fulfilled
Is a tree of life.
Proverbs 13:12