poem of the day 05.28.14

smart phone users at the

sigmar polke exhibit 05.24.14

sigmar polke worked across all mediums

painting, photography, film, drawing

prints, and sculpture

but i can’t seem to get across one gallery of this retrospective

without some asshole stopping

to check their smart phone

or i have to weave around some bored

twentysomething thumb-humping their gadget

for the status update of the latest facebook bore

maybe you’re just too diverse for these folks, sigmar

for the girl tweeting about her times square lunch

for the boy playing candy crunch on a bench

for the woman posting pictures from the top of rockefeller center

maybe nine galleries of experimental german art

has taken these poor fools to the brink

of their ability to process information

like the lady over there by your prints

of homeless men on the bowery

the one buying shoes on amazon

or the guy in the old navy american flag t-shirt

the one who looked like he stumbled in here accidentally

while on his way to snap a photo of starry night

can we really blame him for checking the atlanta braves score

while propped up next to your four paintings of strings?

the old man next to your potato fortress

for writing an online complaint letter to our commie president

for letting art like this slip inside our precious borders?

even i’m having a little bit of trouble here, sigmar

i’ll admit to it

and i like your stuff

you’re kind of like the missing link for me

between the way they used to do art

and these asshole who call themselves painters and sculptors now

someone for whom the function of art still mattered

but i’ve been watching this video of you placing orange peels

on some woman’s camel toe for five minutes now

and i still don’t see the meaning behind it

other than maybe the effect of boredom on that day

or how you were just a bad flirt

but your painting of a dozen supermen

crowding the aisles inside a supermarket

that got me

it was quite a riot

i mean if i had a smart phone

maybe i’d take a picture of it

and put it all over the social networks, my friend

give this exhibit a little boost

although more than likely i’d just tweet

about how many fucking tourists there are in this museum

stinking up another saturday for us locals

here in good ol’ new york, new york.