rozk | Two bitter sonnets

Nothing to do with the amazing Amanda Palmer gig earlier - I came home and started thinking about how we relate to art and artists...There's at least one more of these but it isn't working yet and I am tired.

1.
Sweet Mimi coughs herself to tuneful death.
Opera goers catch orgasmic breath.
Moor-killed Petrushka ghosts it on a roof
and we get off. And it's the simple truth

Le Sacre's chosen one falls down so dead
we riot then we come. And there's a red
that Rothko painted - if there weren't a guard
to stop us, we would stroke it until hard

Donne's verse does that and there's his picture too,
to make us hot, and that's what poets do
lead us to lust. The priest who burns their books
Is never quite as silly as he looks.

We like to think art draws us up to mind.
Mostly it fucks us, crudely, from behind

2.
We wait at stage doors hoping to catch sight
of actors, singers, those who work the night.
No longer whores, they sell us back our lust
packed, tamed and managed - our dim lying trust

that they would love us if they only knew
Our love, our worship. And it's sort of true
they need us, but they need us in our seats
cheering them on, a crowd, whose clapping treats

them close to gods for some few well-staged hours.
They bask in it, they bathe in it. The showers
of love make them quite wet; each of us thinks
it's us alone whose bliss the singer drinks,

or worry that they don't love us at all
and fuck a mirror, up against a wall.