Bringing in 2012 with a new poem

Art is a process.
It's not a two step thing,
a class and an exam,
a question and an answer.
There is no beginning or end.
So thats why I like to think of it as a seed.
See, in the spring
we dig little holes and place little particles of
life that will return itself back to us
or
continue to grow up big and strong.
There is no destiny for most sprouting plants.
There is no map to plot out the height or
the amount of branches it will have or
to even know where it will be in 20 years.
So when I hear professors and professionals talking
about the perfection in Michelangelo's strokes and how
pristine the Sistine Chapel's ceiling is and
how
no one can ever emulate or recreate the beauty etched
into the finger tips of his angels,

I always wonder if they know.

If they know
that art

is never finished.
It is simply a work in progress.
See, even Michelangelo felt unsatisfied.
He started over so many times that the initial piece of work
was never what it turned out to be.
To us,
that is beauty.
To us,
that is meaning.
To us that is a story and
so many of us walk through life thinking
ours isn't even comparable.
Even bearable.
Even the first leaf on a tree in mid April
but recently
I've understood that him and me have more in common than you think.

See, I used to be an addict.
I used to paint my days using finger tips crusted with
the residue of yesterdays heroin,
left traces of morphine in every word that splattered against
sympathetic ear drums and with them,
the scars of watching a loved one erase themselves.
Stenciling what was left of me into seeds that I'd be planting
for 6 years of my life
and by the time I turned 23,
I was surrounded by forests.
Covered by red woods too tall to see over,
to chop down,
and some just tall enough to keep others from seeing me
at all.
But one day
I put down my paint brushes.
I laid down on my scaffolding and looked up at the art work
I had been massacring and decided


it was finally time to start over.
See, I am a work in progress.
I am built from botched blue prints and bad choices,
from narcotics that put most users under ground but I

I refuse to replant that decision.
And even though I haven't pick up another pill,
or gone back to inserting dirty dollar bills into my nose,
some days

I still drink myself to sleep.
I still smoke away my anxiety and
caffeinate my mornings because
theres never really an end.
There is no map to plot out where I will be in 20 years,
or how many branches I'll loose along the way.
All there's left is this process,
this constant beginning and to me
this is beauty.
This is meaning.
This is my story and even though most might look at me as an addict,

I just see Michelangelo.