Graffiti

A tagger

A vandal

A villan

A hero
Graffiti writers channel there emotions through a can of spray paint, and then after they are done, they melt back into the city... just another face. Before you know you were even hit, He is probably at home sleeping

i knew you would forget my name
if i didn't write it for you every day
for you to see.
so i found the bridge your car whizzes under
every day to work
and sprayed it in blue
with toadstools and fireworks
pretty girls and tampons
was it enough to wipe the yellow from your mind?

i knew you would forget my name
if i didn't write it down every day
for you to see.
so i shimmied up the sky and hung a banner
of azure eyes and white, white teeth
and waited.
but next week i saw it
floating down the river
with two empty cans of chewing tobacco
and a lemonade carton.

i knew you would forget my name
if i didn't write it
big enough
so i held my breath
with my head on the tracks
and waited for the rumbling to stop

by chance i relived that scene
in the cosmic cloister where i'm still waiting
saw that my head was smeared for a mile
trying to spell out
Hello!
but the trail was an unripe cantaloupe

i turned away
and wept

You have always found a way
to inflate yourself,
a thunderhead of you
a rainer upon parades
keeping your own side dry.

Praise your portolio,
record yourself accomplishing that,
but wait, there’s more of you
the lost boy
dressed as a hero.

The prison of ego comes first,
then the crippling psychic wounds
and the inevitable chaos
that just ****** you off
because there is just too much to manage
and you cannot do it alone
but you don’t dare tell anyone
so you fake it
and you don’t make it
and one day
while you are too busy
refusing to be grateful
for the awesome mystery of your own chi
a tagger defaces your BMW
in the parking lot of Whole Foods
and you weep into your tofu.

Starving for meaning, an agnostic
bruising grey and white matter,
choking on maybes and half-truths,

finds indifference too easily. Never
pushing further through, cloudbursts
condensate but never conceive rainfall.

Something and always something
more gives pause, upon bathroom wall.
Scribbled as an epiphany lightening bolts

eye-opener, and its leakage capitalizes.
Each tagger finding more prophetic
words to denounce anything mystical

or godly. So, what's being fertilized
beyond the tinkling drain of insistence,
slumps downgrade to ebb of sewage

reaching sea. There amidst flotsam,
aeon's class of power perceived become
one with Supreme Being, an ocean.

When did the only way out...become a ****
Knot in your Stomach, Behind a MAC 10 slug
It feels Cold and Heavy, no way to Pay your Dues
You were just a Tagger in the Street, Spray paint in Hues
How'd you end up carrying Cold Steel to protect some deal
North side Gang wanna dis on yer own Homies
Gonna cut you to the Ground over a Kilo of Blow
Cold sweat on your fingers, and fear in your heart
Feels Like you wanna cut and run, can't let it show
Northsider's down on Lake Street, is trouble they Know
Lead about to Fly like Minnesota Snow
2 guys in a car Spraying Cold Steel Death
Word on the Street 'bout the Drop of ****
Car rounds the Block caught in hot Lead Blow
Bullet thru a window Caught a 9 Year old
Hot News of the Day, Laid out Cold
Body in the Morgue, a Mothers tears flow
Fear in the Streets, where'd the Good times go

Sadness or Madness, Still the rule of the fool...JMF 12/5/14