WE ARE THE PULSE OF ORLANDO

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/moma-acquires-rainbow-flag-309234

A SORT OF CONSOLATION

 

Slim and smooth as a teen-age boy,

With hands and lips willful and deft,

He led me around like a toy

Duck on a string . . . until he left,

Taking a great piece of my heart—

A double defection and theft.

So I was left with my   art.

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http://www.ebay.com/itm/Painting-NUDE-male-CITRON-watercolor-2-1-50-gay-rear-/360484267999 

TO THE MASTER, WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

After the heat of struggle comes the cold:

Like you, I must resist, now, growing old.

Never without foes, often unsure of a friend,

Unlucky in love like you till near the end,

Passionately I take the strength you give,

And wonder whether my words, like yours, will live.

True Irish to the marrow, you took old age

Dreaming and fighting.  And, tempering your rage

In the blood, bone, and sinew of your art,

Defied both defeat and triumph.  So great was your heart.

https://cantshutupabout.wordpress.com/2014/04/07/poem-of-the-day-project-he-wishes-for-the-cloths-of-heaven-by-w-b-yeats/

GRAFFITI (AN UNPLEASANT MANIFESTO)

"The Critic and the Lawyer but behold

The baser side of literature and life."

                        Byron, Don Juan, X: 14: 1-2

Sincerity's no guarantee

Of art—of poetry least of all.

Sincerity's what confessors hear,

It's what the nurse and medic see,

Or worse. I sometimes feel

The greatest sincerity's what we read

On restroom walls:

"I want to . . ." "Call me . . ."

"Whoever reads this is a queer . . ."

Call it ignorance; call it rage,

The major symptom of our age;

Call it, if you will, sheer lust

Perverted and fertilized by disgust,

It shows the basest need

Constrained by fear, and thus

It is sincere, even when in part

Unconscious.

But . . . art?

Anonymous, they bare their need,

Evading responsibility

Through secrecy in public,

As, behind doors, lawyers trick,

Yet magnify the law:

"The Law exists apart."

"The Law exacts awe."

"Law does not swerve."

And, like graffiti, like all means 

Self-elevated into ends,

The law remains erect

Long after those ends it was meant to serve

Are not. 

The law does not respect

The sticky issues of the human heart,

Which usually turn out to be,

On close examination, rather raw,
As in graffiti—

The raw material, in fact, of art.

True practitioners and those who know,

On the other hand, elaborate from need,

But know that need is not enough

Without the skill to take the rough

And change and mold, or make it flow,

Make stubborn forms or passing waves,

That startle while they captivate,

Releasing us as they enslave.

But even so,
Like law and graffiti both,

It's a necessity—

I mean art merely,

Not sincerity.

It helps us live with one another

And with ourselves—if not like brothers,

At least in a natural sort of order

While we remain, oh so sincerely,

Selfish, unloving, cowardly.

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