Hollow art

 A picture of you is a sketch at best

A portrait I guess

To capture your soul

Or to exhibit your beauty

Now who is this picture

Is it you?

No for you have changed moved on, grown old

The picture remains forever young

And in the eye of the beholder

Becomes whatever he or she believes you to be

But not the real you

Just the picture of you

That superficial brush stroke 

The work of light play

Shadow and contrast

The movement of your flesh

Some ideas

That attach us to our own flesh

So what becomes of your picture?

It is consumed and absorbed by the viewer

It becomes a body given flesh

By the eating

The cannibalizing

We have become the cannibals now

Having gorged on instagram, we are walking albums

If not in our heads, in our eyes

In our nervous systems

Changed irrevocably by the humanity of flesh

Where is the democracy of flesh

No it is a thing without choice

Feasting on the ever present, omnipotent, inexhaustible

Stream

So turn it off,

In a flash you can dream

Life as art

 My prediction is we will all stop wanting

To be artists, because unless you are a millionaire

There

Really is no point in even pretending

You stand a chance

Against the closeness of killing time

That comes after you like baying dogs

And the train tracks of certain logic

Lead you on

And on in inevitable perfection

If you could only stay on the tracks

But there is some self destruction that leads you off

Whether the road is cracked

Or that you have hit the road

With your hammar of art

To break up perfection

Into shattered pieces of life

You try to put back together

In your own collage of life

Then walk over these "Tombstones of damage"

That lead you onto the next precipice

And they say life is art

And Art is Life

And "the moving hand writes"

But we know not what it writes

And who holds the brush

And who paints the light

Or tells the birds to sing

Or ever wondered about anything

300 years a statue

What gets to me about pulling down statues, is that it was allowed by the police, presumably as a thought out method, that they did not want to have a riot on their hands that they could not control, or be accused of police brutality in resisting the action of pulling it down. So in a sense it was sacrificed for the greater good. What does it matter, it was just a statue, I mean a racially potent, and provocative piece of public art that representing oppression of black people. Yet it had been doing that for a very long time, and it also represented history. My fear is the message sent is that when ever any particularly angry mob is in enough numbers, then the Police in Bristol will allow whatever destruction of property the mob /crowd leaders/ protesters feel justifies their violent attention and that this will be permitted. So that if a far right group also decides it wants to countermand its own protest and focus its attention on some public building, public artwork it feels insults its beliefs, then this mass action, and mob-rule is the best way to accomplish its aims, and the police would be within their rights to stand back and allow this, because it is the will of the mob, and it fears future repercussions if it does not relent.

The statue is so deadly

Statue, statue Statue
Oh symbol of you
Lay you down in the ground
On a day so blue
And everytime I build you up
You meet somebody new
Oh Statue, Statue of you

Liberty, liberty, liberty
Liberty was my wife
But she was made of stone and bone
But no blood off my life
And I stood her up in the Cemetery
That was my strife
Oh Statue, statue of you

Don't you know art is deadly
And dreams are the stuff of art
They build up these symbols
In the foundation of your heart
And every time you paint them
A piece of you falls apart
Oh painting, painting of you

Waxwork, waxwork, waxwork
Oh waxwork doll
You walk around in facts and talk
Of taxes so droll
Happy with the maximum hurt
Bestowed by the toll
When we cross your bridge
You fine us, like a levy on our soul
Oh waxwork, waxwork of you

Museum, museum, museum
Its amusing to see 'em
There
Hanging in the gallery
In the hall of souls
Under lock and key of the guard
For all eternity
Love, liberty and waxwork
In a house so empty
Yet full of artifacts and objects
So deadly they have killed
All the painters and artists
Who ever shined their skill

So artwork, artwork, artwork
What will it be?
My money or my life said Titian
Said the greats of posterity
And everytime they build you up
They just have to fall
Oh Artwork is so deadly
Hanging on that wall