two barks don't make a bite
but
it takes two dogs
to make a dogfight

underpass gallery
where urban Picasso's
tag the walls as their own
having never paid a penny
in tax to offer compensation
for their spray paint intrusion
or maybe a **** and *****
or just *******
freedom of expression
being let out from under
the thumb of authority
mum and dad
school teachers
social workers
this is their voice
crying out into the darkness
of the unknown hereafter
that scares the **** out of them
perhaps we should listen
they are the future
perhaps we should be down there
with them
some of us could do
with a bit of freedom of expression
let some hair down
while there is still some left
to let

sitting in a bathroom stall
writing graffiti on the wall
this little poet
is leaving an imprint
on a cafe bathroom
in the middle of perth city
i hope you read my words
i hope you understand my meaning
i wish you all the best
on your adventures
in the city

Some people: That's vandalism!
Other people: That's art!
Me: How the hell did they get up there?

Marooned within a span of finitude
We claim we are lost forever!
Our hearts beat violently inside our rib cages,
Trying to tell us truths that we brush off as myths.
We paint our houses and bodies with brilliant colours and darkest inks,
Hoping that it would make up for the ugliness we harbour!
We spin fantasies locked up in self-made prison cells,
Sidelining the hideous realities as not part of 'our story'...
We carry our vulnerabilities as a taboo,
(I, sadly, would not blame each one separately for it)
We have woven this illusion together with our cloudy minds.
If a bird could judge high from the sky
It would have made out the fragmentary lives we live in...
Inside a single fortress surrounded by high walls, yet violence if we traverse the margin between two rooms!
If and only if, we would have understood that it doesn't require too much a sacrifice to unite
That we can leave our homes simply plastered and our minds simply open.
Urged by a force to change, if only we had exposed ourselves to paint graffiti on that common wall that surrounds us,
Splashing ingenious shades of love and brotherhood,
Of a fluttering feeling of oneness and entanglement.
We would have laughed together, danced with glee and holding our hands together we would have escaped unto a better reality...
If only it was true, I wonder
How spectacular a place the world would have been !

How I'd love
to spray paint the words
"*******!"
upon your white picket fence.

I will destroy
your every
perception
of
p̶e̶r̶f̶e̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶.

Oh,
pardon me.

I retract my statement--

we don't rhyme
where I'm from.

At some point, you realize
it is more than wanton destruction
or the need for an outlet.

There is art in it, purpose,
and messages as bold and secret
as those of the grandmasters

and you stop shaking your head
and you stop in the open-air museum
and try to understand

what lied beneath the visual rant,
People passing wonder at you standing there,
head cocked in thought,

“Silly man!”, they whisper between themselves,
“May as well understand God as this drivel.”
But they would be wrong.

God is easy. He leaves his messages in the open,
allowing us to complicated them
with prejudice and a need to control.

Art though, is hard. We lack the code
that lives inside the head of the artist
with the spray paint,

but the prejudices are just as strong.
Still, you try and in the trying,
the loud graffiti on the wall becomes yours,

at least a little bit.
And you become just a little more human
in the effort to understand.

Its eighteen months since her delivery
Now she is penning odes ostensibly
Crayons in both hands: she is standing tall
What Dada says? "No writing on the wall."

With great care baby writes her graffiti
Not much untouched by her audacity
He tries to compromise with a new book
but baby says, "Daa Daa"; with a stern look

He has to admit the walls are hers now
Filled with scribbles and a chromatic cow
Its her version of Van Gogh's Starry Night
without the stars; a novice oversight

She's more surreal than Salvador Dali
The writing's on my wall: Pure Graffiti