QUESTIONS ABOUT PRIMAL COLORS
Graffiti-layered buildings
flow past our train windows.
They line old storefronts
like giant Crayola boxes –
raunchy pinks, belligerent blues,
blazing yellows. Fattened letters
and giant numbers wink slyly
at transient visitors.
I wonder what masterpieces
these colorists might produce
if they held easels and brushes?
If they had toured museums
where Kandinsky, Corot
or Caravaggio had taught
them about layers, light
or depth? Would energy from
these worn away walls sizzle
less or pulsate more? Do these
masters of magical markers
suspend time and place as
their liquid neon spills forth
onto crumbling concrete
and corroding cinder blocks?
I want to know what happens
in the moments while each
psychedelic mist spills out
like a rainbow in search
of solid ground or a firefly
before its flameout? As each
artist reaches up, aerosol
cans spewing spindrift,
are their sorrows suspended?
In those fleeting fragments
of time before the luminous
colors adhere, do they wonder
how daylight audiences
will greet their fiery
hieroglyphics? Do past
legends of loss metamorphosize
in their minds eye to majestic
murals and panoramic portraits?
Might one of these virtuosos
scribbling sagas on hardscrabble
structures become an oracle of
oil sticks, like Jean-Michel
Basquiat, hoping someone
will decipher their masterpieces
before it is all too late?
Amtrak. Passing Philadelphia