Austere To The Point Of Extinction

Politicians nowadays, and to an extent have been throughout history, eager to cut programs for arts and humanities in favour of saving money for the reserve of the purely scientific. This is what they call ‘austerity’. This poem centres on just that. What will happen to society if the arts are eradicated? If children aren’t told that they can be artists? We will form into a monolithic society following production based careers only. Everything measured by economic benefit. This is not how we should live; not at all.

Cut my throat and the blood will run a scarlet sun
setting on the deepest dreams of all but some.
Red rain will pollute every river and every tree;
a bloody reminder that we’ll never be free.
The basest artist may well starve and die
but their sanguinary canvas will refuse to lie.

Now we live through a voltaic effulgence
banned from what’s seen as archaic indulgence
and we have found our lives not ours to paint,
like a vast sea stained with a distilled taint.
They constantly discuss notions of efficiency
ignorant to their own soulful deficiency.

My tears fall like watercolours,
as we fill in another asphalt grave.
The petrol black absorbs all colour;
the landscape could not be saved.