Creative aspirations/Commercial limitations

Creative aspirations—
they come in hot, like a saxophone at midnight,
blowing notes no one asked for,
but everybody needed.
They don’t walk in the room, baby,
they float—
like cigarette smoke curling above streetlights,
dressed in velvet chaos,
wearing shoes made of daydreams.

And then—
Commercial limitations strolls in,
slicked back and buttoned down,
counting steps like pocket change,
counting time like it’s got somewhere better to be.
It’s a man with a ledger in his breast pocket
and a smile you can’t quite trust—
the kind of smile that hums
“Yeah, kid, that was nice.
But where’s the hook?”

Now they’re face to face—
a trumpet spitting blood-orange notes in 5/4,
a metronome clapping back in perfect 4/4.
The dream says, “Let me bend this note till it cries.”
The deal says, “Bend it all you want,
as long as it sells by Tuesday.”

And ain’t that the dance?
That tightrope strung between gallery walls and grocery lists,
between genius and invoice,
between the ink that bleeds
and the ink that signs.

Creative aspirations want to fly, man,
want to jump the rails and run through traffic,
naked and holy,
howling into a hurricane of color and sound.
But commercial limitations—
it wants to pin you down,
clip your wings,
slap a barcode on your soul and call it product.

Still—
listen close—
when those two lock horns,
something sweet starts to cook.
A groove slides in like bourbon in a low glass,
and baby, that’s the moment—
when rebellion puts on a tie,
when compromise grows teeth,
when you find a way to make the ledger swing.

Because art ain’t dead, darling,
it just learned to dance with the devil
without stepping on its own two feet.

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