Performance Art

We cluster around the table like knots at the end of a hairbrush

Mesmerized as we watch a girl

Douse herself with milk

Chanting moderately relevant mystical statements

We find meaning in the nothingness she has created

The potent ideas that we can’t find behind her

“performance art”

We are obsessed

For we are the elitists when it comes to other people’s pretension

Claiming ironically that we were

Just trying to be free

As we make the same bad decisions

We laugh at the kids with beanies

Because we are the true artists

Dressed like homeless people

Sipping tea with our laptops

We snarl at the hipsters

Declaring that we despise the phonies

As I coil my head with another band

And lust over boys with sweater-collared-shirt combos

We are too modern to be politically correct

And never afraid to shock ourselves with our own ideas

Empowered by the fact we rebelled against society

See we refuse to conform to your nonconformity

We ignited the revolution of normal

Sneaking into Spielberg screenings

Competing over who can pry into the psychology of our partner best

Our fights are when we shove the internal to the external

Arguments about narcissism and originality

We lie to each other

Display the character flaws we love about each other as vices

We define ourselves as the coolest uncool kids

Trampling on the toes of our faiths

I say Jesus is a false idol

You tell me that the only one who chose Jews was ourselves

I mix you liquid melodrama

And watch as you force it down

It never kicks in

We are living the placebo effect

Never connected to the series of stories that compose our lives

The world is just malleable material

That we churn in our minds

We want to be crazy

So we can post-analyze why and how we did it

Feel accomplished in our ability to live

Not because we mean it

We mock the liberal arts college idealist

And the NYU indie filmmaker

As you minor in philosophy

And I in resistance to genocide

Feeling superior because

Some list told us that the film school we attend

Is slightly more elite

We, the anti-hipster intellectuals

Claim to be the real artists

But we all know is performance