Life is a ******* canvas,
a mess you don’t know you’ve stepped into,
until your foot’s stained
a smear of doubt,
blood from the gods you thought you knew,
the first breath
a slap,
a jagged line that cuts into the gut of you.
****, it hurts,
but you keep painting
‘cause the world ain’t built without your hands in the ****.
It’s paint on your face,
the drip of your own blood
mixed with rage,
‘cause what’s life if not a battle between what you want to touch and what’s been forced into you?
You’re born with a brush in your palm,
but the strokes are jagged,
sharp edges,
a million questions you don’t have answers for.
You want to fix it
but the canvas bleeds through your fingers,
so you just keep ******* going.
Each line is war,
each color is death,
each mistake is your soul
ripping open like a wound.
Nothing is clean here,
not the art, not the mind,
not the **** heart beating like a beast in your chest.
You hit the page with fury,
twisting the paint till it burns,
till it scars.
You step back,
but only to get a clearer picture of the wreck you’ve made.
Life, like a painting,
is the blood of your struggle,
the grit of the grind,
the brutality of change.
Can’t fix it,
can’t make it perfect
It is what it is
but ****, you can make it yours.
You can make it raw,
tear it apart with your bare hands,
and watch it bleed into something real.
‘Cause at the end, it ain’t about the clean edges,
it’s about the chaos
the mark of the beast you leave on it,
the rage and hunger that refuses to die.
And when it’s done
you’ll see it.
All of it.
Every jagged, broken line,
every scar on the page,
and you’ll know,
the mess was never the mistake.
It was always the point,
to paint...
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
APRIL 2025
Paint ...