Is it art?

http://omstreifer.wordpress.com/2013/07/12/is-it-art/#comment-3293

I have a blog over at wordpress and sub rosa is one I read regularly. Her post about Duchamp's effect on the artist community and the title "is it art" cause a lively, though polite, discussion.

I would like to respond here with a poem:


Art is no longer of value…


The human condition is not curable but maintainable.
The right drugs can make it possible
to cope with the side-effects.
Having been valued
on the basis of an ability to
generate more economic activity,
people in need are filling up all the waiting rooms every where. They need diagnosis or sentencing.

The torturing of test subjects has become a cottage industry.
Stay at home moms in far away places
sell the results to pharmaceutical companies.
Sometimes
they get on television
or sell the rights to their stories to movie companies
generating more economic activity and making it possible for them
to buy the products that are advertised during the intermission
or along the side of computer screens
while people far away watch them
on You Tube.