I don’t know if I belong
At these art shows
But I go to them anyway
I couldn’t tell you why a Monet
Is any better than a Manet
But I do see something
In the endeavor of pretty pictures
And paintings
I went with a friend
To an opening that was busier
Than usual
I proposed we get a sandwich
And wait till it cleared out
She wasn’t so quick to surrender
So with a little polite shoving
And standing on our toes
(Tall people should be fined
For standing in the front)
We had a satisfactory time
When I was getting tired
And really missing that sandwich
Aubrey (this friend of mine)
Pulled me over to listen to
Someone giving a speech
On the mechanics of art
It sounded like a jumble of remarks
To me
So I just stood there
Hands deep in pocket
Thinking I couldn’t be any more bored
Sitting at home and watching
Sex and the City with my mom
But about a third of the way
Into the speech
Somebody (God thank them)
Let out a very loud awkward fart
The crowd laughed
The speaker paused
Looked un-amused
Then continued
The rest of the speech
I stared at the lips of
The speaker
And imagined nothing but
Fart sounds
Issuing from his mouth
We eventually left and
I finally got my sandwich
As I ate
I devised a probable
Thesis statement on a napkin
“Art is a trained fart
A carefully considered
Ejaculation
Unless you’re burnt out
Lazy, or self-satisfied
Then it’s just porn”
I asked Aubrey’s opinion
And she said it was somewhat true
But it would get me a C minus
At best
1 comment:
Can I just tell you how much I love this?
I love it a LOT. As in, pretty stinking brilliant. I think it's one of your better ones. "endeavour" ; "surrender" ; good word choices there. The "thesis statement" made me laugh :P
It was just... idk. It seemed to come from a different place than your other ones, lately at least. Or maybe that's just because I pictured it differently, the setting, because you said "art show." The narrators of your poems (whether they're completely "you" or not) always seem to move and exist in a slightly chilled (I didn't want to say "cool") bubble of solitude, like standing back from everything even when in the middle of it, and just watching... This poem is awesome because it has that same sort of semi-conscious awareness of that in it, but also the interaction with Aubrey (which is a kick ass name btw.)
I like the occasional use of parenthesis. It really seemed to convey to me the way the mind has of sometimes thinking two competely different things at once, like double layers of meaning. That's not often well expressed in writing, because the words on the page are necessarily linear and "dead" in a sense.
This is probably way off, but it would be really cool if you had some sort of "symbolism" in mind for the sandwich--since it's a guiding thread connecting the various stanzas. You can do a lot with a sandwich metaphor, LOL.
The comment about the mom and the tv show was also really interesting. It added a certain depth to the narrator, and really shifted the poem (and the narrator) into a new perspective for me, because that's a very revealing kind of comment for someone to make. The one thing that didn't quite seem to flow/fit in that stanza was the "jumble of remarks" because "remark" is such a generic term, and of course they were remarks, and "jumble" at first glance indicates mere disorganizedness, so I thought maybe a different adjective than remakrs would have conveyed the point I thought you were trying to make a little more clearly.
Wow. I did ramble on. Hope these comments are helpful. :P
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