A Thought on Commerce and Art Expanded

It is long past the hour
When even the criminals have retired.
Cacooned by layers of thermal clothing
I am naked in the presence of this passion
This all consuming fire coursing in my blood.
My entire existence reduced,
Or just maybe elevated
To be encompassed in a sentence
Another word.
Oblivious of the mainstream
In which I am carried along
My life becomes a singular act so simple.
Even little children are taught how to write
And so the passion is revealed
As little more than an indulgence.
Yet I silently persevere
Screaming my conviction
Upon impotent reams of paper.
So many things to say
And still my voice remains silent.
All of these noble endeavors
Judged first for their material gain.

No longer are we concerned with creativity in art,
For all we seek is a marketable formula.
And in our submission to the market
We whore the truth in our souls
For the price an enlightened comfort
Which is ultimately neither.
We switch ourselves off gradually
From the evidence of what is going down all around us.
We fatten our pathetic little realities
Which amount to no more than a distraction
An ineffectual sanctuary from the storm.
In return we receive meager tokens of our worth
From those who seek only
To perpetuate their own flimsy lies.
The truth it seems has become a non-usable theme
As art stoops to don the mantle of entertainment.
A sensory whore monger I am
Amid this unpublished verse
Scattered liberally upon the threshold.
My sole remaining virtue is the fact
That I am no longer a member of any oppressed lineage;
At last I am gingerly able
To consider my virtually insignificant part
In a far grander community.
A far more deceptive politic
That orchestrates the very movement of the earth it seems
As we sit soberly speculating upon the future.
A civilized, once more enlightened speculation
That cautions against bitterness and rage.
Yes it would seem altogether wise
To transcend the sickeningly familiar destruction:
Imperative to our survival in fact.
No one person can turn very much around
And yet we each posses the power to contribute
Towards what can only be described as the purging of humanity.
For too long have we allowed pseudo belief
In divine intervention
To hold us in passivity
Mere onlookers at the deathbed of this ailing mankind.
Tomorrow is already too late
All we have is this last day
This single moment in which to make a decision.
Life or death; politics or truth; money or creation
And if then there remains any doubt,
Then surely we are all damned
For who of us are truly individual
And separate from the whole?
What is mankind if not only a man?

And beyond the confines of today
Beckoning like the return of passion
Within our souls we will find
The essence of beauty.
Once again reunited with our art.
The novel embraced by a smile;
A gesture profoundest poetry;
The dawn and all of its light the canvas.
How I long for a time when our lives
Become infused with true knowledge and wisdom
When our every movement and expression
Becomes a humble, unassuming work of art.
(19/07/97)