Wednesday, May 28, 2014

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.

                                                

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