Trauma Bonding For The Poor-ish

Art will not save us.

It never fucking was meant to.

We inherit trauma like heirs to a sadistic father's mockery of generational wealth distribution;

debts, nightmares, a lifetime subscription to misery,

and a free side of existential dread.

We call it medium, canvas, verse, 

while everyone else waltzes past,

pretending a painted sunset can outwit the cosmic collapse

like a toddler hiding socks from the apocalypse.

We wear conscience like a luxury accessory,

sniffing the crumbs of someone else’s guilt,

smiling politely while civilization quietly writes its obituary in smoke.

Meanwhile, the filthy rich and ugly powerful laugh,

their wealth stacking like walls

between themselves and the decay we all feel,

their vanity rising while meaning crumbles beneath.

We pontificate. We curate. We frame.

We write essays like commandments, then call it activism.

We call doodles revolutions.

We call scraps statements.

Capitalism giggles, rents a billboard,

and calls it profit.

Art is not revolution. Art is not salvation.

Art is survival for the cursed with conscience,

the ones who bled before the first word was written,

the ones who discovered the punchline of the cosmos

was middle-class worry, and it cut like a knife.

If art could save a species, we would still be apes.

Kingdoms burned. Revolutions failed. Colonies collapsed.

Industrial empires poisoned rivers.

Atoms divided the world.

A genocidal psychopath turned suicidal at the wrong end of the right bullet

while someone somewhere 

painted, sculpted, wrote, and laughed, 

through each and every one of it.

Art is the species’ stubborn scream

against the slow-motion circus of its own extinction.

Art is survival for those who cannot bribe meaning,

cannot define it, cannot force it into relevance.

It is the only thing that makes sense

when everything else dissolves into noise.

We tell ourselves it is necessary

because it will save the world.

The truth: it is the only thing keeping us

from melting into regret, apathy, and quiet despair.

Art is trauma bonding 

for the emotionally broke,

and financially Communist.

It is the lifeboat in the sinking boat,

the bandage on the wound existence refuses to stitch,

the single candle in a warehouse full of alarms,

the laugh in a room full of screaming economists,

the polite middle finger at reality itself.

And if we watch closely,

we may even catch ourselves laughing, 

while insisting we were saving the world all along.

And maybe, just maybe, 

we were only ever saving ourselves.

Which, honestly, is more than enough

for anyone still awake,

for anyone still capable of pointing at the absurdity of it all

and saying:

“Yes. This is fucking hilarious. And yes, we are all fucking fucked. Until Capitalism finds me. Then it's just you, who are fucked.”