David K. Leff, Essayist, Poet, Lecturer

Finding Graffiti

Graffiti is almost always startling, regardless of whether I like the particular image.  Even when it’s disturbing or ugly, I’m usually intrigued by the bright swaths of color and unusual, flowing shapes.  Perhaps it’s the juxtaposition between the artwork and the illicit canvass that most grabs my attention.  I’m no fan of the serious damage such artistic vandalism can do to private or public structures and favor rigorous enforcement of the law, but I nevertheless admire the seething, raw energy many of these painters express.  It seems to me that there ought to be places where graffiti is welcome—on a wall or other structure set aside for the purpose—so long as it doesn’t offend whatever local standards a community wants to maintain.  Like the boulders sometimes set aside for painting on college campuses, these places could be painted over and over again by whoever has the urge.

Plesant Valentine (poem)

The cemetery’s sweetest name sleeps beside
a stone wall where eighteen-wheelers
shudder the ground at a hard turn.  On a simple

granite monument only that name invites
curiosity where facts survive the grave
no better than flesh and bone.  Virginia

born and black in 1848, slavery
was a legacy for this runaway teen
fighting under stars-and-bars, awaiting

a heart-thumping run to the blue
where he simmered stew and fried
bacon for Union soldiers.  At war’s

end he bounced around milking
cows, haying, chopping wood
and building fences.  By sweat,

sore muscles and scrimping over
a decade he bought his own place,
a spacious white house edged

in pickets where he grew well-to-do
and hosted meals for the down-and-out.
Profiting in real estate and mortgages,

he kept cutting oak, maple,
and chestnut to make charcoal.
I imagine the proud old collier sleeping

beside the smoldering mounds
of slowly charring wood chunks,
his smudged face as black as ever.

Disgusting Beauty

What disgusts me at first frequently reveals a ripening, hidden beauty.  Often, I’m startled less by a revolting object than my growing appreciation of it.

A few days ago I found a raccoon carcass on a utility right-of-way paralleling the Farmington River not far from home.  No road kill, it was neither flattened nor desiccated on pavement.  All that remained was the vertebral column and a blood reddened ribcage connecting a battered head and mangy tail.  So worn was the ringed tail, that the most eager Davey Crocket wannabe wouldn’t pin it to his hat, and no self respecting teenager would tie it to a car antenna.