Art, Artifice
Posted: October 14th, 2011, 11:25 am
Art, artifice
Cardboard boxes crushed by
Brute, lead
Atomic weight of 207.2 atomic mass units
When formed into a shell
Many shells
A reef of shells
Lining the ocean floor
Like dead submarines
Unexploded torpedoes
Art, artifice
Can not send smoke signals
Like a reefer
The sweet smell of illusioned peace
That limp, inert leaning of the skull
Against a wall of human engineering
The mellow yellow of a living room light
That the 60’s sitars, guitars, horns
Gave such a sense of well-being
While outside, bull horns and sirens
Everything is an emergency
In that pressing hour of passing now
The crushed cardboard boxes
Empty from the beginning
The documents in a far away archive
Spiritually shredded
Feet that leave their muddy prints
Have walked through
Neither to here nor there
But in the backrooms of the mind
Where fear is overloading the electricity
The smoke dominates the nasal passages
Of thought
Certainly we think with our nose
Follow the scent of blood
It is instinctual
Scavengers we are
Hovering above grievances, wrongs
Ripping for reasons
Into the flesh of the body politic
Art, artifice
So inadequate
To contain the grunts and screams
But we must
Our minds heated in the cold night
Shadows illuminated by the flames seen through our eyes
The inner man burning his ideals
Such childish documents
Catechisms proven provisional
Only
The tribal totems, drums
Inside our eyes, behind our ears
The dry cardboard of the world we imagined
The changes in human nature are the masks
That the faceless wear
When dancing with semi-automatic rifles, canisters of mustard gas
Nuclear devices
Plato’s Cave is a den of emotion
Not idea
A pit of instinct
Not rational thought
The cycle of storms continue
Until
The voice of artifice complains no more
Because there is no braying animal left
To suffer
The indignity of molecules
Cardboard boxes crushed by
Brute, lead
Atomic weight of 207.2 atomic mass units
When formed into a shell
Many shells
A reef of shells
Lining the ocean floor
Like dead submarines
Unexploded torpedoes
Art, artifice
Can not send smoke signals
Like a reefer
The sweet smell of illusioned peace
That limp, inert leaning of the skull
Against a wall of human engineering
The mellow yellow of a living room light
That the 60’s sitars, guitars, horns
Gave such a sense of well-being
While outside, bull horns and sirens
Everything is an emergency
In that pressing hour of passing now
The crushed cardboard boxes
Empty from the beginning
The documents in a far away archive
Spiritually shredded
Feet that leave their muddy prints
Have walked through
Neither to here nor there
But in the backrooms of the mind
Where fear is overloading the electricity
The smoke dominates the nasal passages
Of thought
Certainly we think with our nose
Follow the scent of blood
It is instinctual
Scavengers we are
Hovering above grievances, wrongs
Ripping for reasons
Into the flesh of the body politic
Art, artifice
So inadequate
To contain the grunts and screams
But we must
Our minds heated in the cold night
Shadows illuminated by the flames seen through our eyes
The inner man burning his ideals
Such childish documents
Catechisms proven provisional
Only
The tribal totems, drums
Inside our eyes, behind our ears
The dry cardboard of the world we imagined
The changes in human nature are the masks
That the faceless wear
When dancing with semi-automatic rifles, canisters of mustard gas
Nuclear devices
Plato’s Cave is a den of emotion
Not idea
A pit of instinct
Not rational thought
The cycle of storms continue
Until
The voice of artifice complains no more
Because there is no braying animal left
To suffer
The indignity of molecules
)