for Monica and Matthew
Do you avoid holding still for photographs?
*
Every body is an expert.
*
Art must help life improve,
not lift it up to be admired
by whoever has the culture and time
to do the admiring.
*
Will you start celebrating
May Day with the rest of us?
*
Revise all thought
(yes, even the revisions
and, yes, even this stricture).
*
Frames get dusty;
books are musty;
when a player turns
the pages of a score
there’s this crusty sound.
Living drama occurs
offstage, offscreen, unscripted,
a stormy performance
yes 2
by crowds swirling up streets,
any artist who’s gutsy and trusty
playing a gusty part.
*
Is confiscation just?
*
Each individual mind
is the collective work
of countless brains.
*
Nurture the emergent.
*
Expect from children
the betrayal of indifference.
Count on the opprobrium
of any new regime.
*
Whatever else, depend on people
to nudge the language along:
there’s a mumbling forward in how the yes
that once affirmed agreement
has become muddled with the yes
needed to reach a compromise
or the conciliatory yes
that acknowledges needed adjustments
or the noncommittal yes
that fails to mask dwindling interest
yes 3
or the excited yes
that expresses passing bliss,
even the last of these yeses,/em>
lacking the force of the yes
that asserts positive dissent.
*
Do you understand you’ll waste much of your life
listening to the self-reliant lying to themselves?