PLAYER

You want me to speak

You want me to write down my thoughts

You want to assess me through a pre written test

You want bragging rights for helping me get through your system

 

And yet you never look into what I put right in front of you

The images that tell the story

The images that display my intelligence

The images that spew my distrust and disgust with the complex

The images that show you that I am an intelligent thinking being                                                        

deserves to be seen and heard

 

My photos

My writing

The scribbles on the side of my essay

The tattoos

The way I put my makeup on

The “hidden” messages on the bathroom walls

The way I dress

The images I choose whenever given the chance…

They tell my story

The one you so badly want to hear

Do you see them?

Are they not in the format you desire?

Can you not give me “credit” for something unscannable?

This is me, not all of me but the me I am willing to share at this point of knowing who I am.

 

It’s easier to tell you this in images, 

it’s easier to tell the truth by throwing paint and tearing a piece of paper in half.  

It’s easier to be seen standing next to what feels safe.

 

If you ask me what education has done to me as a creative child,

As a creative being...this is my answer as an adult.

 

And now I teach the adults how to process what they do to others.  

Where that comes from within themselves.  

How to work from the inside out, to better SEE and HEAR the beings in front of them, taking all they are giving, harmful, true and often well intended.

Now an adult too, I find myself wrestling with that same traumatized youth.  

Seeking to embrace how the “unusual” brain processes and how it can be assessed in a world it’s not invited into.  

Being told that “this isn’t a mind map.  

Do it again...no one's MIND works like this. 

 Make your mind work like all the other artist’s minds.

We are different.

I want you to be the same as me 

is what I heard.