Austin White - 2013
He preferred black and whites, the dark and drab,
and a Blick palette knife for the arts he'd tag
on naked concrete slabs. Crouched in faded jeans,
spraying slouched maître d's with empty shopping bags
who pout "Delaying the Dream"; he popped the caps
like an aerosol fiend, free, sovereign, brash;
a student of Banksy's themes with a backlog racked
with the pain he'd seen; depressed, his coffee black
painting life on subway cabs to Mogwai tracks.
He dreamed, with the duress of a suppressed insomniac,
of sunlit days filling causeway cracks with vestiges sprayed
with mirth, that his melancholy message'd change,
free to express his form away from these desolate days on Earth.
An addict to sedatives. The way it worked; he'd inject then plunge,
then nightwalk. Pick through his bottles, each separate one,
and stalk his sidewalks to pick the next section done.
And that's how, on the wrong night with the right cop, weapon drawn,
he'd set upon his next path, of somber mannerisms
during a couple years in jail, for a drug charge and vandalism.
He stared, affixed and straight, to one wall of the cell
of the six by eight, and ignored the waveless minute's wake
where he was accosted to dwell. He kept to his own,
cleared his dinner plate, and welcomed this home.
When the lights would quell, he sat cross legged on the cot,
stare still affixed, and imagined the sights he'd spell
with his grips on a valve, dispelling his thoughts.
He'd mime the motions. The diagonals and cross thatches,
odd patterns, new shades and gloss patches;
he grew. Gave to new palettes. The freedom of blues and reds,
off hues of grasses. Revived, he exhumed the dead,
and let go of sadness and the misused guile of his art,
picturing depth in joy, and he smiled in the dark.
Pastures of wheat, oak trees grew in his sleep,
he'd imagine them on that wall, those square miles of park.
Plying his trade, without touching a lid,
just through rewinding his brain. He loved through his bid,
and left with only one tag; signing his name
on the best piece that he ever did.
