Picture Our World, Picture Your Life – a poem about art and patronage

Prose by Edward Steven Katz, Illustrated by Alex M. Wolff

Like neighborhoods across our towns, a pressure cooker might explode.
Times are tough, people stress, society itself might just implode.
People talk, people chant, people scream, people cry,
many with privilege don’t yet get why.

Cavemen had to draw on caves, perhaps it was cavewomen.
Each society had arts and crafts, not knowing that it was a thing.
Any of the arts will do, if you want a pleasant surprise or two.
Check out some art, it’s good for your soul. It fills you up, it makes you whole.

Agnostic, atheist, religious or not, some human beings must create.
Conservatives and liberals only differ on taste, except the numb who see a waste.

A picture is worth a thousand words. Norman Rockwell painted
The Golden Rule, not for art nerds, certainly not for a fool.
In sales it is known, all too well, that facts tell, and stories sell.
And, art is a story, when it’s done well.

Yet patrons always backed art up, feeding artists, housing them.
Popes did, Queens did, Kings had fools, cavemen’s art preceded tools.
Court Jesters did their standup as the muses sat and posed.
Painters, sculptors, musicians played, as writers sat and composed.

The Medicis and Borgias of Italy and Rome, without art could not be considered at home.
Michelangelo and Leonardo da V., would have starved without generosity.

In times like these, when times are tough, with people stressed, job market’s rough,
art takes on a greater task, like for a drinker, art is a flask.
Just one swig, the worst seems past, drink it up, great art can last.
No hangover from an art exhibit, or a Broadway show, or a movie, though
the refreshments may cost you, some serious dough.

It continues today, with opera and ballet, artists create, and patrons pay.
Whether you buy or whether you pay, take in some art, enlighten your day!

© 2020 EDward Steven Katz / Express Yourself With Eloquence

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