Graffiti (poem and prompt)
Graffiti
Have you ever felt stalled, stuck inside a dingy space you never wanted to go, a space maybe we all have to go? Like the filthy stall of the only bathroom for miles, and you mean to get out as fast as you can, but the floor is sticky, it grabs your soles. The writing scratched on the walls is awful and lewd, and worse still, it’s all about you. You are a dozen words you won’t repeat out loud but do repeat over and over in the cramped closet of your own mind. No one, standing in this space would ever call you and expect a good time. You are ink and angst and accusation. You’re the hollow tube where there should be paper. You’re the sticky squalor that coats the floor, until— and you can’t explain it, except to say it’s a bit like that pause when your hand cramps from writing and you set down the sharpie to shake your wrist. How many endings were changed by just that gesture? It isn’t always an act of will, this pause. And maybe yours feels like luck, but suddenly you see in the flickering light that words are just words. Flat lines and flat curves, on one face of a wall that you can step beyond. Space opens around you. Space opens inside you. And the clean quiet within feels like something that someone should write on a wall somewhere. Like GOD WAS HERE or I AM HERE or maybe simply HERE.
Photo by Red Mirror on Unsplash
The Prompt
If you’d like a prompt to play with, give this a go . . . as you move about the world, pay special attention to graffiti and/or signs. (Those catchy slogans on the signs in front of churches sometimes seem to me to be screaming for a poem!) If you aren’t inclined to leave home or aren’t able to do so, then take a moment to recall memories you have of outrageous billboards, heartwarming flyers, school desk graffiti, etc. Or perhaps the concept of graffiti is enough to kick off a poem inside you? As always, I look forward to reading whatever you share . . . whether or not it has anything to do with this prompt! I’ll see you in the comments thread.
I'm tired and a bit loopy. Without further ado, here is my offering.
Turn around,
don’t drown!
So proclaimed
the mini matrix message board
as it dripped rain
for what seemed surely
at least The 40th day.
What a glib way
to warn one off
from potentially violent death.
I thought this thought
as I watched traffic
speedily splash past the sign,
apparently undeterred.
A sign of the times.
My thoughts turned to God.
What if he’d been inclined
to command via sign
back in Noah’s times?
Skipped the tedious specificity
about gopher wood and pitch and cubits
instead spitting some dope rhymes,
at just the right times?
Don’t be daft,
Build a raft!
Then,
Stay on the ark,
Don’t disembark!
And, lastly,
Before it’s too late,
Procreate!
This entire riff being
a sign of my mind’s
umbrage with these times.
Taking a break from working, this poem came to me. We live in New Hampshire, and every four eyars we are treated to a revolving roster of presidential "hopefuls" traipsing through our cafes, streets, campuses, churches, synagogues and temples, our concerts and sporting events. The New Hampshrie primary has just concluded, and tehy move on whilemany of the signs ar eleft behind. The former President does not do retail politics like we are accustomed to, so now we add rallies at arenas and concert halls and sporting venues that disrupt lives in more ways than one might imagine.
These signs that proliferate for a few months seem like graffiti to me, though perhaps not nearly as illumninating. Hence, this poem came to be.
Necessary? Evils
They arrive again like locusts,
unwelcome guests bursting
the bucolic bubble,
nitpicking weeds that you were sure
you had vanquished.
These political signs arriving
every four years,
blotting the landscape,
barraging our senses,
numbing our minds.
One pronounces “Truth”
as if somehow we all get
what that means.
Another adorned in patriotic fervor,
familiar tug at our childhood wonder.
One claims to make us great, again,
leaving me to ponder
whose great do you mean?
These signs and symbols
that populate our viewsheds
and block our hearts from
what we really need to see.
Football stadium ethos
and soccer style rampage,
the shallowness of their message
overshadows all we need to know.
Winners and losers
stuck in duality;
Beneath the glistening snow
hope waits for its time.
Election over, votes tallied
the rain begins to fall.