“MFA programs are to the world of art what gentrification is to your neighborhood” —Sarah Schulman
Storied blocks
of gilded lilies
Stoop to gag
A good pun may be admitted among the smaller excellencies of lively conversation —James Boswell
Where swells dwell
Baring brash colors
Standards flag
I would never stoop so low as to be fashionable —Dolly Parton
Stacked up front
Steep fashion runways
Seldom sag
It’s easy to get by on a façade of fancy style, but sooner or later, people are going to see through it —Jim Carroll
Patina
Graffiti of time
Bronze age swag
I’ve always felt that if one was going to take seriously this vocation as an artist, you have to get beyond that decorative façade —Anish Kapoor
Pimped demure
Habits out of date
Dolled up hags
I’m not dismissing prostitutes, but a lot has changed. This so-called gentrification, it can never be stopped —Benjamin Clementine
Pig iron
Monkey bar escapes
Zig and zag
Gentrification … means that there just aren’t any scruffy little basement clubs left —Derek Ridgers 
Sad gladrags
Madly dignified
As price tags
I think that our language, culture, age, fortune, property, and our fame is all a façade. In the end, we’re all the same —Jenova Chen
Herb sachets
Signature bidets
Johns in drag
What is exhilarating in bad taste is the aristocratic pleasure of giving offense —Charles Baudelaire
Exposing
Urban culture’s cracks
Hopper’s bag
I’ve always wanted to be a brooding, deep, dark artist, but I can never keep that façade going for more than 15 minutes —Bryan Callen
Tenement
Testaments tattle
Telltales wag
To what will love not stoop! —Samuel Beckett
Flights above
Fusty wine cellars
Proud stoops brag
Artists are always the Johnny Appleseeds of gentrification —Scott Hutchins
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GODSLAUGH.ME 
I love that first quote in particular!
I’m not surprised, David, that you *love* Sarah Schulman’s equation of MFA programs and gentrification of neighborhoods.
You are both creative writers of not dissimilar worldviews, I don’t know if you are also a Distinguished Professor of Humanities, but that wouldn’t surprise me, either. 🙂
Regarding gentrification: While ‘Love Is All You Need’ topped the charts, Yours truly was landlord and resident of an old, narrow, unprepossessing semi-renovated town;house squeezed into a Manhattan street of derelicts, like snaggled, nicotine-stained old dentures, very few festooned with scaffolding. I got in for zero down and two mortgages totaling five figures. Got out seconds before the Chelsea gentrification boom ballooned that property’s street price literally by orders of magnitude. I got out in exchange for all there is. 🙂
I think that, in a way, perhaps you did too, in abandoning a promising secure career at twenty-nine. 🙂
This post reminds me of my process of polishing a poem for publication. 🙂 I love how vivid these graphics are.
I thought your poems were polished by the rush of the wind, LuAnne. 🙂