TheCreativeRoutine

The SAMO Artist

It was the same old for SAMO, a product of a world so cold.
For even an artist in new hair and new clothes still remains an artist:
a sacrificial lamb for the community in which he has been received.
The romantic enigma, birthed and supported by our desire to eat
of the trees that drop the fruit produced by his genius looms.

But, eventually, when his destiny looms deep over the horizon,
the artist child cries out and…is rejected by the ones he was created for.
The artist child is ignored.
Even with his desperate eyes, the genius cries and produce tears
that could quench the sun before it rises, but gone is the allure.

No more. No more. No more need for the artist.
After all, he has accomplished all he was created to do.
For did we not create the artist?
We pushed him along, encouraged him in his creative pursuits.
Sang praises and sang songs!

But in the end he’s been done wrong.
As he unwillingly sings his swan song, we’ve moved on.
Desperate to be pleased, our cathartic need will soon have
our newest artist on his knees. And even as he begs and pleads,
we will have moved on once again. For no one wants to be the
friend of an artist that can no longer pay society’s rent -
an artist that will soon no longer exist.

*I wrote this poem several months ago shortly after watching The Radiant Child. The SAMO Artist is an allusion to SAMO, Basquiat’s former graffiti tag.