An Exercise in Futility

I am not an artist.
Well, not the physical kind.
When I find myself attempting
To create something from nothing,
I feel as if
It is an exercise in futility.

My drawings are dreary,
My paintings pathetic;
Even my colored pencil-work
Is mediocre at best.
It seems as if
This is an exercise in futility.

Frame my art on your wall,
Under a sheet of white,
To hide the lack of skill within.
I'll take no offense;
Lately I've seen that
I am participating in a no-good,
Yokelish exercise,

An exercise in futil-ity.

My pottery teacher asked
If we could make a cylinder.
Simply a tube, half a foot tall,
But my attempts resulted
In what could only be called
An exercise in futility.

After many failures,
Many creations of what
Can only loosely be referred to
As "cylinders,"
My rage got the better of me;
Stupid exercise in futility.

Filled with anger, I gave in,
Up I stood, to the sink I walked,
Tools in hand and dignity discarded.
I began to clean the clay off,
Letting it rinse away.
I know full well that it'll always come back;
Those tools will never be clean.
Yet it made me feel better,

That exercise in futility.