Insight today’s penny candy
so cheap an all day sucker.
These days art’s futility
asks “Is there some vague future
for the conceited, artists of our age?”
The future fades into a machine.
Beyond death left to the hopeful
and inspiration is assailed as dream,
an escapist resort here and now
for the conceited, artists of our age.
Belief springs from barren cold
compared to past artists’ dream-scape.
The blindly ignorant and/or faithful
alone, now, in will to create.
Cast bread on acidified lakes?
What fish will rise?
Will coercion toward sameness fail?
Will bottom-line-ism turn
with the wheel of progress,
descending to the dust
that coats Erato’s hope nowdays?
Churn it up and out again.
Feel it and think it,
then say it, paint it, sing it.
Inspiration echoes from past ages.
We can’t let industry curtain art’s pages.
We, the conceited,
artists of our age.
(Copyright: James T. Risdon 6/8/92)
Klown-toNW 