The Critics

The Critics This poem begins with a short story Once upon a time in a land and time far, far away People would listen to music Read Novels Read Poetry Watch movies Look at art And decide for themselves Whether or not it looked good Sounded good Kept them entertained Or touched their soul These people knew beyond doubt When they were moved And often moved to tears Moved to smiles Moved to silence All this happened Once upon a time in a land and time far, far away Then one day The Critics came Deciding that they new better Than everyone else So they formulated their opinions Joined their clubs And backed each other up They stole our appreciation Convinced us With complex hyper intellectualism With clever explanations Of artistic social statements They took away the art And made it feed their world They took away the art And made it feed their ego They took away our art And told us that we the populace Just didn’t have a clue It’s always seemed strange to me That a critics talent propensity Is to criticize Do they stand there with a brush And pour out the colours of their heart Do they ache on the tip of a pen Trying to capture burning lines Written in their souls Do they have the talent to produce the music Do they even know what a muse is Do they produce anything of note Anything which “we” may consider worthy Of taking note It’s the strange talent-less world of The Critic They wish that they could do it But they know they can’t So instead they just steal it And try to tell us they know what art is But we know they don’t These people will use our indignation To get the worlds attention To make us listen to their opinions Of our own creations They will sequester our right to see Any beauty that we see And sell it for the price And do it for the money