"Where your treasure is, there will your art be also."
Sheeps of the Shepherd

"What would the community think?
You are so beautiful, you are so beautiful"
Cat Power

Will Your Art Be Also?

If you are elegant & beautiful,
like a fine,
subconscious wine,
exquisitely de-aged,
unfashion-ubly
bored &
suggestively underfed,
will your art be also?

If you are a wisp of stylish smoke

Or a cold, concealing
ghost,
wrapped around your deadly inner
fire,
will your art be also?

If you are a toad of great distinction,
a connoisseur of flies, known
to linger long
at the literary word-wort,

If you are the leader of the swamp things,

If the bonfire raging
in the pompous graveyard,
presumes
to be your friend,

If your desires never end,

Will your art be also?

If you idolize the misanthrope,

Punish the executioner
with a healthy sense
of pension,
and greater expertise,

If you blur the lines between the gallows
and a weeping chandelier,

If you illuminate the room
with swinging
corpses
from the ceiling,

Contort your face
into a disingenuous caricature
of sympathy
and feeling,
will your art be also?

If you turn away from idols,

If you decline to pull the button,

If you refuse to choose
to push
the swollen,
pulsing lever,

If you walk away
forever
from the neverending
never,

Sever the advances
and advice
of the stop-motion class
among you,

Will your art be also?

If you embrace your outer darkness,
unto whence thy sins
are cast,

If you play Chinese Handcuffs with
the past,

Cast your lot among the drunken
until your soul
and cheeks are sunken,
sinking fast,
will your art
be also?

If you kick your crumbus to the curb,

Or recite the Book of Stooges

To a drunken,
uncle'd gathering
of suburban,
new-age Scrooges,

If you invite your wedding
to the death-feast,
arrange
your buffet upon the misanthropic
patio
like a broken, lonely
Daddy-o,

Will your art be also?

If you are a homophonic killer,

A pillar of disunity,

Will your art be also?

If you are the self-indicting sleeper,

An histrionic public weeper,

Or the introverted keeper of the burning inner blame,

Will your art be also?

If you are a canister of diaper-foam
compressed into a single
tongue

Extinguishing the wishes of the woulda-been
young,
and dousing all the fires
of the free, eternal
flame,

Insufferable,

Self-righteous,

Somnambulant,

And lame,

Will your art be also?

Free spirit, you are beautiful.

So beautiful.

What would the community think?

©Nathan Payne
March 2024