Barbed Entitlement
by Odin Roark

The fresh steamed suit
knows that light awaits its movement
to render the hues
of silk thread,
ever so proper for his entrance.

Clinking crystal and perfumed air
fill the gilded atmosphere
where privilege wanders among
fraudulent pleasure seekers
feasting upon the wall and pedestal trophies.

Such is the tempting insatiable sense of ownership addiction.

In the canvas world of chafed hands
made calm by coins at her feet
being tucked beneath
an ever stooped body,
a jocular bid wins the misery depicted.

Such art continues to spin the cocoons of
tomorrow’s adornment for the gluttonous,
wanting only to own, keep hidden in private rooms
removed from all eyes except those he invites.

Do they deserve to drive the price up of interlaces of many kinds,
the paint-layered canvases moving from backroom
to a easel beneath auction lights?

These woven and layered carriers of beauty,
often have but the eyes and fingers that harvest,
weave the fine silk
of the man’s blue threads,
moving with cunning aplomb,
his bidding fingers high.

One wonders…

As a sculpture is up for the next indulgent session,
does the lady in diamonds care of the life-fire that melds steel upon steel,
or the exhausted arms that wield hammer and chisel to reshape granite,
certainly not the delicate hands becoming one with the loom
blending rainbow threads for vibrating quiet tremors of color and light
for the intimate silence of an ownership’s need.

Is art’s birth not only the beginning, but the end?

The only realm that knows
the infinite grace of imagination,
where creation cares not
for the auction power of the gavel,
or life’s work enslavement the privileged keep hidden
behind their castle walls

How curious…

Beneath the guise of champagne and charming smiles
the indulgent think otherwise
until sometime down the road,
fate delivers the hidden costs of their appetite with gnawing despair,
even as the manufactured remorse spews forth for sympathy.

“This has worn out its welcome. Put it up for auction,
or give it to a museum. My friends have all seen it.”

Such a destiny asked why we should care for those
whose insatiable voracity for trophydom
has delivered them into the open arms
of greed’s chameleons of pain,
where entitlements barbed inevitability
leaves its scar…

Until the next auction.