Art Dies When Subsidized

Why should I care if the art class gets cut?
No, I will not buy a muffin, a T-Shirt, or a pencil,
and no I will not purchase a magazine subscription 
to the latest incarnation of the Daily Worker 
and I don’t want that magazine
and I don’t like that magazine.
Oh, you think that I might like that magazine?
No! I hate that magazine!  
It ought to be burned!
Turn away from my doorway, I say, before I burn 
that magazine, you ignorant, misguided, pompous teen!

I happen to know Mrs. Kritchly personally-
she’s supposedly the art teacher who supposedly teaches art-
her eyes burn bright with a violent red, that communist!
That whole school’s ran by a pack of communists! 
They’re trying to turn all the kids into communists!
Even the custodian carries a communist card!
He flashes it about while he's raking the yard!

Where are you going?  Please, don’t leave.
Wait, maybe I’ll buy your muffin.  Listen,
I have an interest in the de-ignorant-ization
of the rising generation.  I want you to bloom.

No, no, no, I’m not against art.
How could I be against art?
You think I’m against art?
Ha!  I might as well be against rivers!

Speaking of rivers, young man, the idea of rivers 
presently presents itself for use in instructive similes, 
like a worker bee arriving at a honey-dripping hive:   

Art, like a river, gushes through gulags, killing the communists. 
Art, like a river, gathers strength from the free-falling 
pitter-patter of raindrops, heavenly, heavenly raindrops.
Art, like a river, rises beyond her banks, engulfs a city
of corruption, and sets Beauty upon her rightful throne.
Art, like a river, guides the lonesome traveler home.
Art, like a river, cuts through earth to the heart of the earth, 
and then swells from the heart of the earth, turns, twists, grows,
and without compulsory means, gives life to those 
who stop by to drink, or perhaps to dip in their toes.

Let the school children learn art the way Elizabeth Cotten
learned art.  (Please, don’t let Elizabeth Cotten be forgotten.) 
She heard a freight train rolling through her North Carolina town,
wrote down some lyrics when nobody was around,
played on a banjo she borrowed to pluck out her sorrow, 
boy, she’d pick at that thing and moan and sing 
all night long ’til she broke a string.