If you have any Imagination left

Red Anemone picture JHM©09

On the Day
By Jacquelyn Hughes Mooney©01

Say...
What would happen on the day...
That artists went away?
How would your universe be altered?
Would it be a dryness?
Or just turn grey?
And would your smile be shrouded in an empty basin?
So utterly estranged?

Can you imagine that day?
When artists went away?
No,
since imagination united with them ...
On a sabbatical cruise?
A sojourn, a hiding place.
On newly shod shoes.
And the vibrant colors...
Of the flamboyant trees that vanished...
Like the Carib did at Bloody River.
Subdued and vanquished they .

And the sounds that mesmerized the moonlight...
Simmering in your ears.
Shall be no more.
My dears...
And multicolored lips in silent speech.
Would be frozen for all times.
There will be no need for word...
To lift, correct or rhyme...
Please teach them!
Or we will be left to mourn...
Alas!
And so forlorn.

In our stead...
With too many Springers, Survivors and trash TVs.
Claiming to be reality.
How unseemly it will be...
When people will exclaim "I dunno"
To thee.
And cursing since they do not have...
The competent words to give authority..
To the untended need to affirm themselves.
That will sit on dead and dusty shelves.

There will be no PBS...
No Cirque de Soilel.
Keller libraries...
Theater forums
"To be or not to be"
American Universoooul Circus
Oy Vey!

Only displaced souls never having a chance
To be still and see.
Museums, salons and universities.
Or be swept away with Bocelli, Horne, Teena Marie or Patsy Cline.
Or feast upon Goodnight, Scott, Slade Kelly or O'keefe's light divine...
Or muse upon Faulkner, Morrison, Mooney
or even McMillian's word to dine.
Or be moved by Ailey, Nicholas...
One and two...
Brishnokov , Jackson's moonwalk ...
Or second line.
Hear the funeral dirge!

On the day the artists went away...
The air is sucked in a vortex.
And giggles were devastated.
And dreams dispelled.
Joy is squandered.
And peace wears out.
The purpose become passive, benign and pointless.
The humanity less humane.

We will...
We must...
We shall.
Grasp hold in a vise like grip.
Upholding the beatous benefactors.
Please keep vigilant and hold fast...
Your artists old and new.
That are tried and true...
From long earned past due.
And moving into future cues.
Otherwise you will soon discover...
What is now undercover.
What is?
Is now past.
Alas!

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