Kara Walker-No, Kara Walker-Yes, Kara Walker-?, (2009)

Art of War

 

Her billing is lost on the last page of our conscience
amongst artifacts and disappearing bees.  Photos
displayed of white sand shores and mango sunsets
neglect melons rotting on Jamaican vines as the

WTO declares exports denied.  Gardens of Eden on
Haitian streets show Adam and Eve running through
fruit filled markets as babies die starving on corners
because no one paints fallow fields and subsidized

rice.  Homage is paid to Egyptian tombs, masks of
gold, corpses and Cleopatra, while food riots grace the
banks of the Nile and mass graves honor no one. 
Which museum will house Rwandan skulls and DNA

maps of Diaspora slaves?  Will Damien Hirst’s blood
diamond thirst reveal the art’s identity or time of death;
its art, for the love of God.  Myanmar dictates
performance art as we watch the body count rise on our

HDTV telethon meter, 1,000,000, 1,000,001, 1,000,002,
1,000,003....... and Katrina became the most famous
name in New Orleans replacing Bo Diddley and Louis
Armstrong while Kara Walker sleeps soundly with

Norton antivirus soothing her bestial desires.  Wynton
Marsalis, play a dirge for the baby men mining coltan
and the baby men fighting in the DRC because they’ll
never have a sexy iPhone to read Sun Tzu’s The Art of

War, widely read by men framed in paintings lining
castle walls.  Young men and women quilt tales of despair
in a world built on greed.  Bombs paint streets with
blood and debris reminiscent of Jackson Pollack canvases
and mothers cry for their babies in the name of martyrdom.

Guernica, remind us why you survive.  Gwendolyn Brooks
reminds me, furious flowers live among the weeds to win
the battles we have to win and war has its consequences.
1,000,004, 1,000,005, 1,000,006, 1,000,007…........
_____________________________________________
Copyright © 2008 by F. Geoffrey Johnson   All rights reserved
First published in Kara Walker-No, Kara Walker-Yes, Kara Walker-?, 2009