Whose eyes matter that much
that mine won’t shut?
Whose eyes matter so much
that I lose sanity
wondering how each person
will receive my art?
Whose eyes matter that much
that mine won’t shut?
Who is it I so desperately need to please
with perfect delivery?
and what am I trying to achieve in him, her, them?
A head nod? An “Amen”?
A tap of thumbs on a small glass screen to share my words and works with more eyes and thumbs and nodding heads?
Whose eyes matter that much
that mine won’t shut?
that anxious toil chokes out
what used to be fun, free,
and not about me?
but about the eyes of someone, anyone
who might look at my work and
peer through a telescope revealing
all that’s outside of herself,
namely hope,
namely not my vanity.
“Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from love of the thing he tells, to love of the telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about Him. For it doesn’t stop at being interested in paint, you know. They sink lower–become interested in their own personalities and then in nothing but their own reputations.” C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
