survivor in poetry

Art slides into the cracks
between the wall-boards
shimmies like cock-a-roaches
art hides in the margins
eating the scraps we leave behind
and breeds and waits
living off the things too small
to even be considered refuse
flattening itself out to scuttle through
places we’d never even think to look
multiplying in the shadowplaces
waiting for the bomb to drop
that only art can survive.

Art can’t die as long
as there’s more than one conscious mind
anywhere to share it with another.

Western Civilization?
Oh yeah, that’s on life support
but good riddance anyway.

Art preceded it and
art will survive it
merely only mutating to find purchase
in a world after this sun sets
whether by quick fire or by slow decay.

Art survived the leadpipe poisoning in Rome
the fall of Uruk’s walls
when Gilgamesh believed himself the king of everything
survived as graffito on the rubble of its gates.

Art is gonna be a-okay.

We might not be
who knows
but art will be and maybe that’s enough.