Not for children
Hail to the artists! Come out, come out, you venerable souls! Pens, Brushes, Cameras, Woodwinds, Strings! Come out, come out, you shy little shits! Sing into the air! Dance against the earth! Make and cast into the streams and rivers of America! Make and blow into the eddies of the wind! Make and piss upon the uncut hair of graves! Your fellow brethren need you now. Their tongues are tied, their hearts are clasped, they gag upon memes and GIFs! Tweets and ads and posts and filters—Oh, the True Disease! They starve, the Famished, and grovel for some soul! Feed them words! Feed them photos! Feed them paintings, music, calm, perspective! Come escort our kinsmen to their caves.
Show them the poetry of solitude! Show them the company of silence! Show them the thrill of tedium! Show them the carnival of emptiness! Come forth and bare their souls back unto them! Unleash! Disrobe! Our shirts and skirts are civilization’s sails! Eye this hurricane with your nakedness! These are the times in which prophets emerge! Write! Draw! Sing! Paint! Dance! Play! Film! Photograph!
Create بِاسْمِ رَبِّكَ الَّذِي خَلَقَ !
Carry on, fellow humankind, and we’ll observe and register. You Nurses, assume your battle stations, and Builders, construct the Pyramids in their honor! You Doctors, command the forces of our kind, and sons and daughters, mind your parents’ health. Waiter, I’ll have the early-bird special! Make that to go; I’ll get it another day. And pour, Bartenders! Pour the Plague away! And Cashiers, ring, and Truckers, drive, and Postmen, walk, and Officers, keep the peace! And Teachers, time to play your many parts: Mothers Brothers Counselors Feeders and Enlighteners! And You, kind silent multitudes! Work, and we will register.
We will paint your nothingness. We will sketch your ghosts and demons. We will scribe your mutenesses. We will score your Symphonies. We will sculpt from this despair some butterflies.
NOTES
streams and rivers of America “Jamming In New York” by George Carlin, 1992. uncut hair of graves “Song of Myself, 6” by Walt Whitman. بِاسْمِ رَبِّكَ الَّذِي خَلَقَ “In the Name of your Lord who created” The Quran 96:1.
Yousef Alqamoussi 