Living the "Art" Life

Living the "Art" Life

You say you wish to live your life as if it were Art, do you?

Then you must be willing to sacrifice yourself on the altar.

You must learn to listen intently to the choir of air conditioning,

and the slow, languid electric chant of your flesh.

You should watch television with your mother, sadly enough,

while your girlfriend rides in cars with strange men.

You should drink every day, until bad things sprout

from between the cracks in the floorboards of your mind.

You must wear a tattered bathrobe like a carnival tent

and gather hours like found items at a yard sale.

Sometimes, usually in the dead of winter, you must

bawl like a baby at the sound of an alarm clock blinking 4:20.

Everyone will say how much you live for your art,

they will marvel at your dedication to your craft,

while you hold your soul in a mason jar, looking inside

to find the miracle trapped in the amber.

Should you persist in this, as only a true artist could,

you would find that there is more, so much more to art

than eating jelly straight from the jar, or cat's whiskers,

or the fluttering of strange pink moths in the winds of your heart.

-----

©2009 Christopher Reilley 

Living the "Art" Life appeared in Grief Tattoos, which is out of print, Kindle edition HERE.

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