Does the sculpture feel the artist’s hand,
Scraping, clawing, chiseling?
The sweet and horrific pains of being discovered,
Released from your stoney prison,
Into a world of light and sound.
Each blow of the hammer carving away what you were,
Smoothing you into someone else’s vision,
Unable to ever even see what you’ve become.
Does the painting know of its creation,
Sharing some facsimile of the life it imitates?
Feeling the tickle of the brush across canvas,
The lude strokes of paint across pale, unmarked flesh.
To feel yourself weather and age,
To become old and weary,
With creaking bones and brittle skin,
To watch other, more striking pieces be restored to youth?
What a life, to be art in this world,
To be traded, bought, and sold,
Silent, yet always colorfully described,
To be told what you are,
Scrutinized and scoffed at in equal measures,
All while maintaining composure.
How cruel it must be, to be art.
To have life breathed into you,
And to be left alone in a gallery,
On a wall to be studied,
Or worse,
Forgotten.
Only the memories of the creator who made you,
The occasional glance from a stranger,
Keeping you company over the endless stretch of time.
Never conversing with your kin,
Perchance, never seeing them.
The madness that must come,
From the endless torment of stationary life,
As more and more artists cast your brothers and sisters,
Shape them, form them, sketch them,
Dooming them to your fate.
How monstrous it must be,
For us to look upon your existence,
And choose to create in your image.