Signature Gallery
Gates Shopping Center 21st June 2008
Signature Gallery - a poem by James Oates
Day by day these walls become conscience
Sentient enough to complete a sociology degree.
I never did care what you did in your gap year
But if you never trust anyone with hair....
How far did you get?
Tag over Tag, like the evolution of thought
Never quite erasing, frequently enhancing
There is a genealogy to this
A conciliation of sorts in this
Deep Field of graffiti.
A place where dinosaurs can co-exist
With Iron Maiden
And post-graduates share wall space
With the barely post-natal.
Between the Pink Palace and
The Blue Castle
‘Dani loves Ian, and Kyle’
And who are they amongst this
Clutter of words,
Jumbled lines of a re-wired brain?
‘Suzanne came from Northumberland
To write on a wall’
‘Hanni Banani’
‘To all the people who loved me’
‘For all the loved ones I have lost’
‘God bless all the loved ones I’ve lost’
Epitaphs and monograms
Adverts and statements
The wall is breathing.
Even through the graffiti the young do not
Obliterate the marks carved by the hands of peers
Only the adult surfaced his opinion as judgment
To cover their expressionism
With the random scarring of intolerant lines
And only blankets himself in the process.
Finding your own space can be hard
Yet the overlays enhance more than they detract.
There is room on the wall for future and past
The present does not exist
Even in inanimate art
It has happened, it is happening, it will happen
Epitaphs and monograms
Adverts and statements
The wall is sentient
It talks to me in tongues.