Rebellion—for too long the status quo,
is, in our day, a predictable show.
Antichrist irony, absurdity
shockingly daring incongruity
no longer shock the bourgeois, you know . . .

Alone in the temple of glass with a rock,
you’re out of traditional symbols to mock.
Surrealists did it much better than you—
and it meant a lot more in ’32.

You chew your cud on the cattle-wagon
overused shock-tactics—moo !—now draggin’
or herding aboard the iconoclast train
(b)lowing through boxcars your bovine refrain:
“to, um, make people think . . .”  Oh Lord, how uncouth.
Nihilist narcissus—tell me, what’s Truth?
Must creative always be subversive?
I discern, in your frenzied discursive,
a dull and predictable lack of life.
While you brandish that plastic butter knife
I  seem to note, in your constant thrust,
dearth of artistic ability.  Must
bohemian acolytes (some yawning)
ever be deer in the headlights, fawning
before the ironic gesture? It’s sad;
the bitter is sweet but the art is bad. . . .

They circle hors d’oeuvres on opening night
like moths around white wine in candlelight,
cerebrating in a modernist void:
contemporary aesthetes, overjoyed
to know once more that life has no meaning;
the planet is doomed; that kings are queening;
that chic just arrived, escorting philosophy
(Forgive us, Duchamp, for all this monstrosity).

I long for Hudson River School sunsets
Old Dutch Masters, religious art, portraits,
Red, green, or black propaganda-art?  NO ! 
The view does not merit the price of the show.
I’m dada-ed to death, beyond the surreal.
Conceptual gimmicks have failed to conceal
your want of ability, values, and faith
In the book you despise it is written: thus saith
the fool in his heart: that there is no God . . .

You: Postmodern Art—to the firing squad!