Art Thieves by Gretchen Meixner

They want to tell me that art has died.
No more, they insist,
No more heavy lines, no metaphors,
Or canvases caked with impasto.
The days have arrived when,
Words will be links to statistics
Creation overrun by insta-imagery.
God is dead, but
Thought is existence, and
I think I am God, and
You are God, and our
Churlish little house is,
The cross and keep.
Colors fade, but
History stays vibrant,
A cinema running through
Our fingers. Your mouth
Is Napoleon's,
Tour arms and scars
Belong to Hitler.
How can art be dead, when
You, yourself, watched me
Paint Starry Night, and I
Helped you capture an era
In verse. It was my mouth
That declared war, It was your
Voice that carried them
All the way across the jungle.
Man cannot undo his own creation.
I cannot deny the ungoverned
Passage of time, and heroes.
I cannot shake the guilt
Of a thousand lonely men.
I locked the doors shut,
I herded the Jews into a prison,
I hacked away at the
Last remaining strands of God.
But there is no crying, here,
In this moment,
Because I also invented words.
Drew out the dreams of
Obscure minds and fruitless hands,
And said "now we can speak".
You and I, we pieced together images
And patched up lives and lovers
Into film, into visible divinity.
I stood on stage, while
The cellos played, and
Changed notes as they floated,
Reaching every consciousness,
Every last morsel of human thought.
Forms change.
We have five fingers now, and
A built-in anxiety for the future.
Newborns cry of necrophilia and
The old wish to be even older.
Poems are spoke so quickly, that
We barely hear the words,
But the meanings are the same.
They seek us in our sleep, and
Seep into our skin, causing
Symphonies and novellas
To trickle through our blood cells.
Fingers push a button rather than
Hold a pastel, but the images still
Sway and conquer, and
Cut and paste into love affairs.
I type rapidly rather than
Write slowly with a quill, but
My hands are tired all the same.