Graffiti Boy

I once knew a boy who'd roam street to street with a brush in his hand and a bucket at his feet He'd put little shadows in corners where sunshine couldn't reach, And string alphabets into quotes from books he couldn't read He'd draw half hearts that'd complete in a different crimson hue, And splatter rainbows upside-down, he couldn't tell violet from blue He'd paint tides across deserts that rose and fell with the light, And birth mermaids in silver that glistened in a new moon night He'd sketch open doors in tall walls that'd make you escape in one look He knew only a little math he left behind more than he took But on one fateful day they took his brush away Wrote laws with his stencil 'For ruining walls, he has to pay' I now know a freckled man who sits back against tobacco stains with that bucket in his stretched hand and pennies soaked in rotting paint.