JSClockwise #CrackedBottomLip #TheBeastInTheMirror #OriginalMusic #OriginalSong #Songwriting

Some mornings call for cream and sugar. Some call for the truth strong enough to leave a mark. Take it black. No cream. No sugar. No mercy. Bitter. Honest. Necessary. #JSClockwise #TakeItBlack #Poetry #PoetryCommunity #SpokenWord #DarkPoetry #WritersLife #WordsThatHit #NoSugarNoMer

POV: the room thinks this is your humiliation. You know it’s your finale. “If I’m down, I’m going down exactly lit like this.” Some exits deserve better lighting. ✨ — J.S. Clockwise #JSClockwise #OriginalLyrics #LyricArt #VisualPoetry #Songwriter

Somewhere along the way, “I did my best” started sounding like an apology. Maybe it shouldn’t. I offer not regret or plea— just this: the best you’ll get from me. For anyone who’s taken a few shots and is still standing. 🎯 #Poetry #Quotes #OriginalPoetry #WordsThatHit #NoRegre

I think poetry is real and contains insight when someone reads it and quietly says, "I've felt that." That's the only test I've ever cared about. — J.S. Clockwise #emergingcreator #poetrylsnotdead #bodytransformation #Lemon8Diary #lyricsoftheday

That flicker at the edge of rest. Some people know exactly what this image is before they finish looking at it. It's 10:47 p.m. The room is quiet. The phone is charging. You know you shouldn't reach for it. But one notification changes everything. Not because it matters... because

I've come to think that one of the greatest gifts of art is that it allows us to have conversations with people we could never otherwise meet. Sometimes they're separated from us by centuries. Sometimes by continents. Sometimes simply by different lives. We read Marcus Aurelius and argue wi

The woman is only the setting. The letter is addressed to you. Imagine finding a smoke-blackened page clutched in the hand of a man who never quite escaped the worst day of his life. His marriage failed. His home burned. His child bears the scars. He wandered for years carrying guilt that har

Every creator eventually arrives at a fork in the road. One path asks you to keep building—despite the silence, despite the criticism, despite the uncertainty. The other invites you to stand on the sidelines and explain why everyone else's work falls short. The internet has made that second pat

Some monuments aren't built to celebrate perfection. They're built because someone stayed standing. "There's a peace in standing shattered right where everyone can see." From Lit Like This by J.S. Clockwise. #Lyrics #Poetry #VisualPoetry #Songwriter #Origina

This artwork grew out of a single lyric from Spider Revisited: "The shape of a woman, from shoulder to moon." The song is full of memories that linger in a room long after the people have gone. I wanted the image to carry that same feeling. I've always been struck by how the curves o

It's about the small choices we barely notice. The habits we tell ourselves we'll break tomorrow. The compromises that seem harmless until we finally see where they've led. That's what inspired this image. From my song Note to Lady Raven. — J.S. Clockwise #JSClockwise #

Most people spend their lives trying to escape suffering. Modern entertainment often does the same. It offers fantasies of power, certainty, romance, or justice, where pain exists only to be conquered before the credits roll. I have no objection to happy endings. I simply don't think they tell

Some places only reveal their true nature in hindsight. The thing that once felt like hope... becomes the thing you had to survive. This image was inspired by a line from my song Spider Revisited. I love when a single lyric can tell a story without needing to explain every detail. The rest

From my song Cactus Man. I think we've all known people who were easy to overlook. Or maybe we've been that person ourselves. This line isn't about expecting someone to notice you. It's about recognizing that a second look is a gift—not an entitlement. That's what m

I wanted to capture the strange relationship between an artist and his work. We don't create from certainty. We create from memory, doubt, hope, grief, and whatever breath we have left. Sometimes that's enough. "Just ink and breath. And both were mine." #Poetry #Poet #So

Some poems arrive fully formed. Others spend years becoming what they were always meant to be. The Spider Tango was one of those. When it first appeared in my poetry collection Forgive This Brief Intrusion, it wasn't even called The Spider Tango. It was simply The Spider and the Fly. I loved

I've always believed the opening line is the most important line in a poem. Not because it's the cleverest, or the most quotable, but because it's the first promise you make to the reader. It quietly says, "If you'll give me your attention for just a little while, I think I c

Walk into almost any restaurant today and you'll see people sitting together while somewhere else entirely. Faces lit by tiny blue rectangles. Conversations interrupted before they begin. Entire evenings traded for endless scrolling. The line, "I chose depth instead of sleep," isn'

There was never any question which song would end this chapter. Long before No Gospel Here became the final release in a year-long string of songs, it existed as a poem called Forgive This Brief Intrusion. I gave that poem the same title as my first self-published poetry collection because it re