GRAFFITI 4: PAINTING PARADISE

GRAFFITI 4:  PAINTING PARADISE

I am/  going to learn me some joy/  if it is the last thing I ever do. ---Hannah Stephenson, “If It Is the Last Thing”, The Storialist, 03-26-12

You have your paintbrush and colours. Paint paradise, and in you go. ---Nikos Kazantzakis

I will learn me some joy is as good a graffiti

as any, if I were that roving paintbrush bandit

doing what plastic surgeons do on old faces.

Rather than spew mischief and hate on walls

that could not even cringe about bad spelling,

why can’t these muffled, lonely night rogues

take their rainbow mayhem to a bravura end?

Paint themselves their paradise, walk right in,

toss a tumbler of brandy, dance a wild whoopee,

learn from throbbing sunrises and loud sunsets,

that someone, somewhere beyond the clouds,

has bested them to this arresting colour game

of crystals at thaw, verdance in spring, foliage

paintings at fall, and dry earth in summer sepia.

There are graffiti artists and there is the Artist

who has painted himself his haven, entered it,

hung himself a hammock, hued himself happy,

and guzzled raindrops washing colour away.

---Albert B. Casuga

03-27-12