No matter how dire it gets,
no matter how despairing,
no matter how forlorn, how hopeless,
no matter how little reason there seems to be to go on,

Kendrick Lamar spat fire and spoke truth,
at least for a few years,
as did a few hundred other contemporaneous artists
who laid it down on the track.

Emily Dickinson
did not stop for death or thee,
but prolifically tackled issues
of universal import in her lapidary recluse's verse.


Chakaia Booker turned shredded tires into museum centerpieces,
hunted spirits, eluded the chimera of consumption,
forged reclaimed rubber into toughness,
a rough-hewn canvas for a displaced people.


You can have nothing going for you,
nothing substantial to look forward to,
nothing above to guide you,
nothing but averted eyes on the street and professional shame,
but still be transported away
by a few glorious minutes of song or poetry or sculpture.

When there's nothing else, there's always art.
No matter what, there's always art.