Charles D. Tarlton
Anonymous Graffiti, New York, New York
An alley filled with colorful graffiti stuck on everything, rising up the brick walls, spilling a rainbow on the asphalt, all the trash cans decorated, air conditioners and doors, and up the standpipes. It’s a candy alley, jellybeans, Christmas twisted ribbons, and jujubes. The graffiti artists have come through here in waves, inscribing the canyon walls like Anasazi maskers or Australian Wandjinas, marking the territory of their gods.
follow this alley
to somebody’s dreams of fairy
floss, and licorice
as if a band of pink-furred
marmosets and tamarins
in loose fluorescent
factories where centrifuges
colorfully berserk
threw painter’s vigilance
to the rainbow’s violent winds
it’s not just colors in the alley’s way of things that wild disarray up and down celestially a box of neon Crayolas
Author’s Note:
Graffiti image by “unknown” taken from “Top 10 Cities with Graffiti,” Pandotrip blog: https://www.pandotrip.com/top-10-cities-with-great-graffiti-21890 (Public Domain).
About the Author
Charles D. Tarlton is a retired professor who lives and writes (now) in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, with his wife, Ann Knickerbocker, an abstract painter.