where has the graffiti gone?
across the rusted rails
a pale sickly ochre
washes the bricks below
and above, faded corporate
poster art, suffering sun,
fog, unplanned exposure,
scotiabank, investors group
money this and sponsor that
before, the walls below screamed
a tagging riot spray cans
colour explosion eye pop
the shock of blank walls
draws me up short huh!
where has the graffiti gone?
i bow my head, solemn,
like i’m at a funeral or
touring an ancient tomb
from an age when giants played
and even those without a place
knew a measure of freedom
i trudge from the barren walls
resigned to my time – bland,
blank, controlled and uninventive
when, before my eyes in half
degrees, a graffiti apotheosis!
seedlings now – a sidewalk
stencil, fencepost tag,
rooftop face grinning down –
flowering soon (as weeds
through pavement cracks), the bloom
of the unauthorized, the illicit,
the inconvenient, the uncomfortable,
the damning, the prophetic
there has the graffiti gone
Download the complete collection of poems and accompanying photographs as a pdf book.