(4-9 beat)
The painter said?
I need rollers and work pants I pled
Paint brushes too
Get my brushes now I say to you
Floor sheet I need
Cover the floor do not use speed
Ladder I plead
Spray can the wall done .Time to drink mead
Solvent,I use
Can't clean brushes without it don't lose
Last coat of paint
You definately get no complaint
Hang plants for sure
Free windows to sunlight I implore
Slush coated figures
have been drawn on the sidewalk,
dribble people, their disjoined limbs
twisted into guesses to be pecked over
by hammer driven beaks.
After the hard-packed snow
acrobats were doodled flying slipshod
below a trapezing wind.
If the frigid sky were a wall
its graffiti would spray can itself.
Here on the pavement the 20 questions
party game is in full swing.
Prompted by the ice art, we ask:
“Is it a place?”
“Is It an object?”
“Is it real or fictional?”
The answer to all these questions
is “YES.”
Meanwhile the swirling unfurling of meaning
still has legs
until feral pigeon wings sweep
even those last appendages away.
What is left
once meant a fleeting abstract something
but that was before
the concrete forgot how to read itself,
and the sky grew too puzzled
to play anymore.
Arrayed with a colorful spectrum that can camouflage
Imagine a butterfly’s life as it silently flutters in flight
Watching her solo or in a multi-pigmented entourage
Your eyes behold her until she disappears from sight
The sunlight reflected her clarity as a shooting star
Wings are so fragile that you dare not touch them
Only a handful of kaleidoscopic creatures match her
She’s brilliant as a stained-glass window or a diadem
The change from larva to butterfly happens as she hurls
A conversion was formed in secret, incredible to behold
She cannot soar until her magnificent new wings unfurl
As she seeks safe shelter from the fierce wind, so bold
Look at how the queen butterfly spreads her wingspan
For a moment, she became aware of her life expectancy
Not just a pretty face from God’s psychedelic spray can
She knows she has to mate with no concern for intimacy
This enchanting transformation gracefully embellishes the earth
An enchanting, delicate species that is admired for its confidence
An enchanted, transformed body yields shortly after giving birth
A gift that brings immense joy carries a rather sorrowful existence
Some poetic thoughts bubble
to the top of your deep waters.
There they congregate, bobbing up and down
forming slicks, oily smears that linger
only to accuse you later when you return to them.
There is a detergent for cleaning them up
it comes in a small spray can
labeled 'revise, edit, or delete.'
Fore heaven's sake
don't let them burst and spill
over the pristine innocence of a page.
Many whopping environmental disasters
begin with a wee smudge.
Some people call it breakfast which makes me snicker and giggle
It might have been since it starts with a pancake or two
except then I add extra things to make it into a dessert.
At the very least I add a pacakage of vanilla pudding,
a teaspoon of cinammon, a quart of fat luscious blue berries
Then I lavishly sprinkle it with a cup of brown sugar.
Next I add.....
Bananas, chocolate syrup, maple syrup,
Caramel syrup, and of course I top it off
with half a spray can of whipping cream. When I eat
all of the whipping cream off, I use the rest of the can.
When my masterpiece is finished no one would suspect
it ever started out as a couple of simple pancakes.
Except my family who have started making their own
concoctions - each starting with two pancakes.
huge uninviting
near fence post low to ground —
maddening hornets
drive by shooting of spray can
the window of victim’s steamed
12/16/2018
I accidentally let one loose -
like an egg bomb laid by a sick goose.
It smelled like a place where they mass produce
sulfuric acid for nostril abuse!
I got out the spray can to introduce
sweet smell to the air. It couldn’t reduce
the odor! The stench was so profuse,
a cop would have fined me for the misuse
of weaponry – which was my caboose!
“The dog did it,” was my lame excuse.
“You bad dog, get out of here now. Vamoose!”
July 11, 2018 for "I Accidentally let one loose" Contest
Now for Jesse Rowe's Second Chance For The Unloved Poem Poetry Contest
It's going to be another hot Amarillo day, but as I emerge from my car, the morning is still only warm with a gentle breeze blowing. I quickly cross the frontage road and head down the packed earth path. In the distance, I can see my destination, ten Cadillacs with hoods buried and tails sticking out of the ground. The last time I had seen Cadillac Ranch the cars were shiny and recognizable. Now, they are merely metal shells with their insides worn away, spray painted a gallery of colors. Hoping to add my touch to these masterpieces, I am disappointed to find the cars are surrounded by a pool of soggy clay mud, sure to adhere me to the ground as securely as the cars if I step in it. So, grabbing a purple spray can, I add my initial to the alternative works of art on the packed dirt, a small part of myself left behind until man and the elements wear it away, too.
Cadillac garden
front ends planted...tails aloft
graffiti blossoms
6/29/18
for Mick Talbot's Haibun Poetry Contest
I read the best poetry
I ever read
Transfixed to a wall
In spray can form
Reckless abandoned vandal graffiti
Is so meaty
It defies art
And expression
Yet will never be mentioned
In any page's or history book's
But if word's could quill
I have found what fills
A tortured life
It is the scar's that bare
The price of paint
A wall adorned
Thought bare
that drawing of a flower
on what was plain concrete
is someone wishing there was life
underneath their feet
and that spray-can painting
of the sunrise on the bridge
is someone's dream they could escape
from the somber life they live
Hi, I’m young, I want to belong,
I come from the school of hard knocks.
So I stamp my tag, wherever I want,
On the side of the shipping train box.
Hi, well, I’m the unemployed artist,
With a political agenda display.
I leave it in all noticeable spots,
With a large cardboard stencil and spray.
Yeah, hi, umm, good to meet you,
I’m the neurotic office clerk.
And, by day at the office, I create little stickers,
That I stick up on signs, after work.
Hey guys, I’m the invisible man,
My blockbusters aren’t meant to be small,
When I leave them all over the side,
On the biggest brick grandiose wall.
These are the folks alive in our jungle,
They’re our modern surviving Tarzan,
Graffitying, in colour, what can’t be said,
Their ideas, our youth with spray can.
May showers come and go, not loitering,
not lolling about long, to drench and drown
the seedlings you planted, hoping for rain.
Hand watering hydrates, but not like rain;
It's the slow steady sprinkling that matters,
which no hose spray, can ever duplicate.
The pitter patter of raindrops in May
caresses the leaves with moist love kisses,
leaving droplets sprinkled on dampened leaves,
to soak in, like perfume droplets on skin.
The soil below embraces the rain spots
falling gently in splits and splats in May,
drawing the water below to the roots,
to be absorbed, nourishing the dry plants.
The May rain's gentle and gossamer veil
drops like silken shroud on the garden bed
A loving sustaining warm covering.
A moist blanket to tuck the seedlings in.
Showers in May are Bliss!
The scream and shudder blasts of noise from the traffic passing by
Could not silence the echo of a pain filled whimper and whine
Floating down a dustbin lined alley, the gloom forever drab
The ribs of the puppy, like bars on a cage, pierced through the shade.
Graffiti on walls not often seen, spoke nothing of the need far down below
The head hung low on paws ripped and raw, the darkness ever darker
The hunger, the fear, the lack of physical contact with another living thing
The coloured spray-can poetry, unwittingly, became a canine epitaph.
Batman and Robin leap through the smashed vault door.
Robin: " Holey moley, Batman, You were right! They're robbing the bank!"
Batman: " Right you are, Robin. What a fiendishly clever criminal prank!"
Holey Moley: " So you spotted me, Twin Tumors! I'm so tired of you two!"
HM:" As the mole turns black, so we'll beat you two... black and blue!"
R: " Batman, he's using his hairy blemish gun to trap us in welts!"
B: " Robin, Quick! Use the anti-mole spray can in your utility belt!"
R: " It's working! Batman! We've stopped every hairy growth cold!"
B: " Yes, Robin! Surrender, you fiend and drop the bills in your fold!"
HM: " You've made your re-marks for the last time ! That's certain!"
HM: " Get them, my big blemishes! Get these vermin or it's curtains!"
Wart, Scar, Scab, Corn, Stretch Mark and Birth Mark lunge at our heroes!
We fade out to Bat Music and the sounds of POW! OOOFF! BAM! and BOP!...
Tune in tomorrow . Same Bat Time. Same Bat Channel.
People creep by looking to score.
Its hell in the city.
Ya hear shots and ya hit the floor.
You try to keep it in check.
Smoke that blunt sip that forty.
Pretend your nerves arent a wreck.
You gotta see befor ya step cause arond the
corner somone does creep.
Ya gotta have a sixth sense.
Or into the sidewalk your blood will seep.
welcome to my life by the gun.
Sometimes you gotta forget to question
just learn how to run.
Turf does change people sort of dissapear.
Cops ask questions.
But the smart never hear.
In this war theres no side to run.
Paint it with a spray can.
Welcome to my life by the gun.
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