It is like fresh flowers
Lovingly placed in a vase,
Like free art for an otherwise
Dull, dreary wall,
Like a Japanese garden
Raked with care around
Carefully situated stones, like
A blues riff on a saxophone –
It is placed where crime, grit and poverty
Raise up like Medusa’s snaky locks in
Untold ways in seedy tenements where
Things are spawned every which way but up.
.
Graffiti brightens gray steel slabs
On trains and walls in otherwise
Sad-faced neighborhoods,
Rides in like a hero, a
Savior of those stepped on by
Capitalist dreams and Horatio Alger
Nightmares. Here’s where raucous blue swirls
With red and black out-lined John and Jane Doe figures,
Stylized gang tag signatures, yellow and green
And purple geometric strokes create a
Most glorious song of the dead rising
From the ashes.
— Stephen Anderson
(© Stephen Anderson, 2008)
Lovingly placed in a vase,
Like free art for an otherwise
Dull, dreary wall,
Like a Japanese garden
Raked with care around
Carefully situated stones, like
A blues riff on a saxophone –
It is placed where crime, grit and poverty
Raise up like Medusa’s snaky locks in
Untold ways in seedy tenements where
Things are spawned every which way but up.
.
Graffiti brightens gray steel slabs
On trains and walls in otherwise
Sad-faced neighborhoods,
Rides in like a hero, a
Savior of those stepped on by
Capitalist dreams and Horatio Alger
Nightmares. Here’s where raucous blue swirls
With red and black out-lined John and Jane Doe figures,
Stylized gang tag signatures, yellow and green
And purple geometric strokes create a
Most glorious song of the dead rising
From the ashes.
— Stephen Anderson
(© Stephen Anderson, 2008)
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