Memory Poem by Steven Visintainer

- Dedicated to the forgotten graffiti artists of New York and Philadelphia in the late 1960s and early 1970s who started it all before there were Kings. -

They wanted to burn it all.
Wipe it out,
Gasoline it,
and impulse and angst-driven lust for freedom
told them to combust it -
petrify it all in ink.
Decapitate it in aerosol,
batter it all,
destroy it.
Blast it all to their esthetic hell,
slay it in a new cosmos of streak-lined and curved beat.

New language more wreckage
more damage youth language
new ravage spray damage.

Maul it all,
rape it,
and murder it all in fresco scrawl!
- The alternative was their madness -
Walls or moving steel ripe for the marking,
districts and tracts for the virgin taking
they felt their birthright
to brag a name
scream it in crime,
script it like a child's birthday cake,
to the eyes of the rich and the poor
in cursive that howled
that resurrected a city in color
and made her a vibrant Lazurus.
Hallmark that could only rise
from the tired breath of streets
that passed on promises
well before news and a new style
scattered and coated
itself across an ocean
and Europe was slain.
Before the privileged
and the savvy came and
played Bach to the graffiti shock
in galleries and commissions
clincked to Chardonnay -
before Kings were made.