Concrete

 

Highly read concrete poetry of the urban environment is drawn rapidly into the wet footpath before it dries. After the concrete is poured urban poets have a brief window with the footpath before it hardens. Therefore, they must make it significant and short, usually monosyllabic. Their words are little more than a little word, their name, or their dog’s name, an initial, a love-heart maybe and the name of their amour. Jesus shows up incognito sometimes. Multiple instances confirm the handful of standard four-letter words to be perennial. The typical window is 28 days, curing of the grey substance, a soft secret for those who unnoticed would act quickly with a gumtree stick found by the path, then tossed away: the irresistibleness of swirling lines through fresco mud. Dogs are unwitting poets of this genre, leaving their daisy chain of pawprints after exiting from a sticky situation. Cats make daintier patterns yet, while humans prefer to put their big foot in it. Ripple soles are eternal. Although fines apply for street artists caught in flagrante graffito, and the difference between graffiti and mural art oft is left to the discernment of connoisseurs, no one ever seems to be fined for leaving their mark in wet concrete. There are those who would dispute it’s illegal at all, or art for that matter. Such thoughts went through my mind on my daily rehabilitation walk around the neighbourhood recently, after I came across this contribution in a driveway: A WISE MAN SAID ALWAYS WRITE YOUR NAME IN WET CONCRETE GEORGE W. 2021 On the face of it, George wanted to say something with his stick, didn’t know what, so wrote this. It’s his own quotable quote, his most durable statement to the world, an affirmation of existence. Wisdom, for George W., is supreme value, something he identifies with by doing what he says, walking the talk. But was it wise for him to sign and date his concrete expression? If the law defined this as defacing public property then the police might lay fines; imprisonment could eventuate if the poetry were serious enough. Under law, graffiti includes scratching and engraving, words that well describe the manufacture of the genre. Which explains why the form flourishes, due to the high value placed on brevity, rapidity, while leaving open the whole conundrum of George W. and his koan. And what of JAZ + JILLY, accomplices? RUSTY, is that their dog? Rain will smooth and intensify their names and dates, if police wanted to track their movements on street cameras. Sunshine will emblazon George’s wisdom for every passer-by who stops, tut-tuts perhaps, and reads. But nothing out of the ordinary will happen, now that the concrete has hardened, 2021 is synonymous in memory with lockdown, and the stick has long since been thrown over someone’s back fence.