Nothing makes me happier than this, 
Getting up at seven in the morning 
Cramming all these pencils in my bag and
Smelling human shit on my commute. 

Ooh, is that a random piece of wood?
Someone with no pants is sitting by it
But it beats a thirty-dollar canvas 
I can’t fit that on the metro 

Lovely! No one’s even here and I am
Forty minutes late. I can hardly 
Wait for class to start so all my peers can
Give me feedback on my painting! Oh joy! 

Ninety minutes later, everyone is 
Looking with that staple zombie stare,
Half the class has left to go get coffee,
Other half you’d think their tongues got sliced,
What a tight-knit team we have in painting! 

Bliss, Professor does that quirky thing where
No one listens as he name-drops artists I will never research, that he went to school with.
What a monumental tangent, teacher! Then you ask me after fifteen minutes,
“Does that make sense?” 

What a rascal, whippersnapper you are!
Love the way you make my eyes glaze over
With an unmatched efficacy. It’s a 
Little game you play, correct? You make
Learning so labyrinthian, and I’m the
Starving rat inside your maze, no exit. 

That’s the point of art school, isn’t it?
That’s why I do art, at least, you fucker!
Every day I wake up feeling giddy 
Knowing that I’m wasting all my money 

Dying, getting nowhere, learning nothing.
That’s a manifesto, baby!




*Illustration by E Kidd