Defacement Poem by Andrew Dabar

Sidewalk chalk. Hear the children talk. A mother's angry boyfriend is coming down the walk. He doesn't care. He's unaware. How innocent and sweet, the magic rainbow beneath his feet, carries him to and from a filthy street. But it doesn't matter. He hawks. He spits. The poor babies scatter. A brother. A sister. There's no such thing as happily ever after.

Swiftly, the years pass by. Cities, like concrete histograms, sit beneath a blood red sky. Ballistics, statistics, blame it on a gun. But what about the missing fathers and boyfriends on the run? Violent thugs. Gaming slugs, coping on prescription drugs. Government welfare. Lifelong daycare. Parents who are never there. At what cost? Another little boy. Another little Girl. Forever lost.

Sidewalk chalk. Hear the children talk. Once a little sweetie now speaks through her graffiti. In bathroom stalls. On subway walls. With rusty colors, dark on dirty white. Shameless vulgarities. Hateful obscenities. Godless blasphemies. She's all grown up and hooking up. He's shooting up. Time erases smiley faces. At the end of every rainbow, there's nowhere else to go.
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Andrew Dabar

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