The Writing on the Walls

Aerosol hisses.

A necklace, beaded with paint, streams,

colors lunging for a place to cling.

And if you shook it up right,

the colors won’t drip,

your words won’t melt away to the concrete,

corners, cars, roads, rocks, tracks below.

Calling yourself an artist, you tag your name,

your game, your claim to walls you didn’t build

and would be powerless to tear down.

Artist, your art is a crime, a force to be stopped:

being that bad-ass is unlawful,

and yet you broadcast on every flat surface you can find.

I don’t know what you’re advertising,

but the whole world is your billboard.

Part of me wants to ask you why,

though I believe I should understand the

words that seem random the sketched sound.

Is nonsense the only language you speak?

Am I supposed to get it,

or must I be in the know to know

who you are, Ghost Writer,

how it is you got up there,

and why exactly you wanted me to stand here

caught in this air-dried moment

wishing I could pull your voice out of the wall?