OnPoEvMo: Adrift on a Raft, May 2007

This poem for my One Poem Every Month for a Year project was inspired by a recent conversation I had with a friend about copyright protection and the artistic aesthetics of releasing your work to the world.

 

Adrift on a Raft
(May 2007)
Listen to the Poem

“Art should be free,”
I insisted but she didn’t believe me —
she couldn’t believe me — she wouldn’t believe me —
and she insisted on arguing her case for copyright laws
and profit margins
and the theft of ideas through digital handshakes,
advertising along sidebars of poetry and images and music —
after which she drifted into some story about the writer suffering for his art
while his words floated free on someone’s high-tech liquid screen
with no compensation,
no expectation of payback for all that thinking and planning and producing.

Her eyes teemed with fury as she talked and I, well, I just blinked,
and quietly hid my hard drive from her gaze so she would not think me
the pirate that I am, the collector of words.
The point I wanted to prove to her was:
if the art is powerful,
if the art is meaningful,
if the art is transformative,
then let it go by releasing it to the wind,
and pray that it will move someone to tears
or laughter
without us first grabbing a dollar from their wallet or a coin from their pocket.
We suffer enough with pop culture stereotypes not to add
“shakedown artist” to the list and what is money anyway
in a place where ideas are currency?
She laughed at me then, scoffed at such notions, and ended our conversation
with a simple, “You are so naive,” and then left me with my idealism under attack.

So here I am, now, turning her into a poem
and then pushing her out the door of my mind on a raft of words
into your ear, dear reader, dear listener,
hoping only that she finds anchor in some friendly port
on the other side of the world.

Peace ( in some distant port),
Kevin