Art

Anfita – Rudolf Olafson

northeast and northwest
the theater major apparatchiks
the kids with money
the kids who come from money
the slam poets
the lithe brigadiers with H&M receipts...
the lo-fi aesthetic junkies
the gallery peddlers
the know-nothing ironists
the M.A. freaks...
the economists of our times...
they don’t know how to converse
they don’t know how to deal
they say things like
i just can’t deal...
they don’t know how to chill...
they are brilliant fools
they’re eclectic
they’ve never had good sex...
they don’t know how to sit on a hill...
they’ve never read Voltaire
they pretended to read Foucault
they read The Stranger and are now
experts on Camus and existentialism
all from one novella...
their thoughts are always “forward”
their only history is colonization
their only humor is irony
they burn shit down
they love chaos
they call chaos progress
they feed on chaos
they can barely speak
they grunt, gesticulate
they like music, kind of
they are alive, kind of
they like art only when
it will serve their ends
all of art must have utility, period
they spent four years at university
mastering compostables
and edibles...
but they never heard of Mao
or the college professor in the red scarf
they think Stalin is a kind of shoe
they think that John Stewart Mill is a brand of pancake
they are derelict, intellectually
but they know all of your motives
they know what’s in your blood
they can smell your thoughts with insect instinct
they are reactionary
they are extraordinary
they seek progress in another land and time
they keep talking
screaming
pointing
burning
throwing
chanting
shitting
feigning
they hate pleasure
miserable conformity is their hedonism
they are like chained pigs
with robot consciousness