You don’t need art

In the middle of a dream,

Waking up cheek to cheek

With your sleeping daughter

Who climbed into bed, frightened

With dreams of her own.

You need art

For the month after your father dies

When everything before you is

Like driving in a snowstorm at night.

You don’t need art

In the middle of making art,

Where art becomes a series 

Of neighborly decisions,

Like driving down a country road

In summer time.

You need art

For those silences

That become decades

Of spiritual distance,

When what was lost

Becomes myth.

You don’t need art

In the middle of the best kissing of your life,

Inhaling each other’s breath,

Lips slipping off each other,

Tongues exploring tongues

Like two night crawlers greeting underground,

Saying hello.

You need art

When you forget what it is to be human,

What light does to a secret garden,

What time looks like caught

Like a moth on a screen.

You don’t need art

Watching a screen,

Bathed in a warm bath

Of images, easy storylines,

Colonized by commodities

Like a shampoo of sublime banalities

Tingling every pore

On your head.

You need art

When you inevitably reach

The disappointing limits

Of any human relationship,

And the act of painting

Becomes an act of certainty,

An act of potential,

An act of transcendence.

You don’t need art

Surrounded by family,

Cousins playing piano together,

Aunts and Uncles reclining 

Into important conversations,

The smell of warm pecan pie

Everywhere.

You need art

When you realize you are 

Basically alone in this world,

That the memory of a friend

Is a far more fragile thing

Then the portrait of a stranger.

You don’t need art

When you have a friend,

Traveling to Oklahoma

Searching for the ghost of Woody Guthrie 

And your father,

Each fighting fascists 

In their own way.

You need art

When you realize there’s no such thing as a friend,

Behind all the pleasantries, invitations, and shared moments,

There are only vortexes of self-interest,

Only veils of welcoming and human kindness,

Only voyeurs of the pain and love

Of another life.

You don’t need art

When viewing art with a friend,

Walking around the Whitney together in silence,

Admiring the portrait of Glass by Close,

Or the Alex Katz along the wall,

Friendship like a pair of figure skaters 

Gliding passed each other in the galleries,

Eye contact guiding 

From one room to another.