Arts Impact in Poetry

On November 1, 2018 CBCA released the latest Economic Activity Study of Denver Metro Culture during a dynamic breakfast event, jam-packed with live entertainment, networking with civic, arts and business leaders, and, of course, data! Bianca Mikahn (artivist, educator, performer),  was commissioned to craft and perform a poem specifically for the event.

 

There are a million
paths to genius
many of which
are swathed in shades of simile

 

We are a collection
of the sights sounds
movements which came before
Spreading in fibonacci sequences
Collecting our very selves
and each neighbor
Folding 0 into 1
1 to 1
1 into 2
2 into 3
3 into 5 and so on until
eleven thousand eight hundred twenty
and more tender homes are lit

 

Glowing testaments to
the sacred value of
how we might break laborious pattern
This truest mechanism
to tickle a mind
stave off mundanity
What is the work
with no whistle

 

We wear goosebumps induced by
a perfectly pitched note
the scent of home
in a master chef’s kitchen
And maybe not every foot
hungers to shift and slide
while in the presence of rhythm but
every ear vibrates
Call it dancing all the same

 

These elements move us
The first bones developed
in humans
are those in the middle ear
Rate frequency
speed amplitude
terms of this visceral transaction
The remarkable sensation
in the certain ring
of a baby’s giggle
The sing song of
congratulations or
happy birthday
The velvet and rough
and smooth and changing
Tapping vivid visions onto a hungry palm
The gasp of these saturated perceptions

 

We can’t help but live art
rising as raw material
for creation
Our various gaits and demeanors
stand in symphonic contrast
A thump of chest
or steady ear held to such
readily offers reference for
our inherent beat
How we compose awareness
to the tempo of racing pulses
and certainly this is poetry

 

There do exist
beings who read each moment
and recognize when the best sustenance
one might offer
is a song
or a prayer
The low tone of condolence
jubilation of merger
dimensions within the technical
Business without art
is a room with no windows
a prison composed of gold
every door locked
with guards and prisoners indiscernible
Still offered emancipation
through the dreams of an architect

 

Our inexplicable hunger
mothering each invention
Constructed by curious multitudes
contributing nine hundred and forty six million
collective claps of palm
tips of hat and curtsy
to these articulations of human spirit

 

Dare we treat each
new sculpture or sound
as invitation
Dare we practice delicate reception
of a precious gift
An occasion to know
feel and claim
ground common enough
to steady our view
of this trembling globe
of these pecuniary inadequacies
calibration of our connection

 

Dare we traverse the rugged gulf
isolating our most defensive perspectives
and of course
dare we not
And also why wouldn’t we
when it seems the only
sustainable safety we’ll be afforded is
through allowing each being to firmly posses
balanced governance of their own narrative

 

We dare demonstrate
these quaint impossibilities
in a nest of brush strokes
In a scripted reverie
In a soundscape
In a dance
Performed simply and explicitly
for the enterprising hope of
inspiring an idle spirit
and a ravenous heart
to consider
to dare
to feel
together

 

By Bianca Mikahn