The Few

By Ashleigh Hatter

My mind is a storm, and all the clouds are on fire.

What is it to be "creative"; to write and jot; to paint and slop; to sing and mock

—with words so poetic, emotions pathetic—

yes, What is it to "create"?

A blessing? 
  Many believe so, and many they say so, wish that they "could just like you and make" so and so, cause if they "had your gift, oh the dreams that'd unfold". Yes, many do envy those that make, that create; but their ignorance... 

Their foolish desires make me irate. 

Because we all know they don't know what they're saying; their mumbled praying, hoping to a god for the power to make and the skill to take a breath away, all the while playing the part of a maker of things, and a dreamer of dreams. 

But making—creating—is not what it seems. 

The end result,
  that thing they focus onto, lock onto, with no regard of the process or dues
The end result is all they see: a point in time, and they can't see the past. Cause that's what makes the true art last; it's not some spell you can cast; it's a pain you outlast and fight through and tolerate,
as your words fill up a page
as your canvas fills with paint
as your singing celebrates
and you keep outliving, keep outlasting your own pain and all that Living, until the matchstick runs out of pine (a flaming tongue that gobbles Time), and we're thrown forever in the dark. 

So, what is it to be "creative", what is it to "create"? 

It's a harnessing of a Life onto paper and song, through dance and photography and cooking and theatrical lights. It's a hardened, hard-lined, hard process of hard times, that drains a body

  —turn to a husk—

in favour of leeching the soul, bleeding humanity, rendering us into something more than dust. It's lasting beyond who we are. It's haunting generations to come. 

Creating is a power we'll never totally harness, but it drives us
—the few—until we're done.