“Tinker toys” they say “grain elevator, cotton gin.”
and I say yes
Art in imitation of the functional
The compartmentalized sphered cube
holistic three-dimensional sculpture holding sculpture.
Let’s say a tribute to the workplace of the farmers
hip deep in their work using sheet and cast metal enhancements
and to construction workers birthing steel-boned concrete
poured with native stone and sand, transcendent technology
saving backs, protecting the future
So sons and daughters could be teachers and doctors
And their progeny artists and philosophers.
Is this hearing place obsolete?
After founding, nursing, and sustaining numerous theater companies,
those ineffable entities, neither thing nor place, nor just knots of artists
contending with themselves, but also made of the eyes and ears
of those who looked outside the TV sets of the last forty years,
the CinemaScope, and now away from the handheld screen
with tight drawn hoodie, and listened with tears and laughed out loud,
actors holding in compliment, in concert with their momentary peers.
So tear it down?
To tear it down they’ll need wrecker balls, torches, jackhammers
and large equipment to remove the steel and concrete and steel set in deep red earth.
Then in a city of empty lots, replace it with an office building with no real intent,
except envy for the reach of the behemoth beside it.
Then, on that day — you know it comes — when every
well is drilled in multiple directions and the layers of sediment
all shattered and steamed.
When pipelines all are constructed, energy infrastructure in place
and empty floors abound, some will ask
“Now where was that odd building both square and round nestled in a bowl
of green two unique theaters on a human scale
with high raked seating for sight and sound?
It had conveyers belts for creativity, condensers for artistic
will sifters for authentic detail grinding rooms to refine human skill
elevators and ramps to raise up hope and high, vaulted ceilings for when empathy spilled.
That landmark, that anomaly, that brutal vase for the living art
of the common man…”
Right there one day in the air about twenty yards...”
Someone may say,
“I saw my first play.”
— Oklahoma City
