“I’m not a bar of soap
to be packaged and displayed on a shelf.

I am an artist.
I do artist things.
I paint, write, dream, and I play.
I philosophize,
and yet I am not a philosopher.

My brain is forever starving.

I don’t use one instrument,
one color,
one style,
one shape—
or a set of shapes.

I can never be one thing
because I am all things
and nothing.
I am not marketable.

I am made of every atom in the universe.

I love things.
I hate things.
I paint sunflowers.
I am not a sunflower painter.

I am an actress
—when I need to pretend I’m not afraid.

I write poetry.
I am not a poet.

I paint portraits—
yet I am not a portrait painter.
Or a landscape painter,
although I paint those, too.

I get frustrated and angry.
I eat chicken sandwiches and BLTs.
I feel joy at the light of the moon.
And I die in the dark.

Tomorrow I will be different,
and yet still the same.

I am all of the nothing of everything.

I am an artist.”