Xochitl Trejo, “My Closest Friend”
At the peak of his youth,
An infant writhes in his cradle.
He scribbles with marker and crayon,
Cooing at the colors,
Eyes alight with the spark
That’s burned since the dawn of mankind.
Innocent hands in the act of creation,
Grasping for something grander
Than the universe itself.
The spark catches,
Lighting into a blaze.
Soft coos become graceful songs
Bright eyes marvel at masterpieces of old
Lithe hands mold and stretch and shape
From the fragments of his heart,
A mosaic is born.
“For what is art,” he asks,
“If not what’s inside?”
It is nothing if not putting pen to paper,
Wrenching ideas from our heads,
Forging them into something greater than their raw form,
And baring our children, our creations to the world.
But the world-
It has forgotten how to appreciate,
How to marvel,
How to feel.
Machines displace the boy,
Abandoning him in a world gone blind.
He’s forced to kneel before a screen.
Zeroes and ones spit out ‘art’
A horrid counterfeit
A digital disgrace
The poets weep
The painters drop their brushes
And the dancers fall and freeze.
None will celebrate perversion
Of what was once beautiful,
What once was meaningful,
What once was human.
But the artists,
Tested by technology,
Hushed by a world devoid of creativity,
Their sparks burn on.
Brandishing their pens and brushes as swords
Kicking and dreaming, sighing and screaming
They cry out:
“If art loses its soul
If Picasso regresses to pixels
If imagination can be manufactured
Can one truly call it art?
Can a machine name itself an artist?
Is a creation capable of creation?”
The world used to know.
It doesn’t anymore.