Poem: "Urban Shamans"

[ysabetwordsmith]

This poem came out of the January 4, 2011 Poetry Fishbowl.  It was inspired by a prompt from aldersprig.  It was sponsored out of general funds based on a recent poll.

Urban Shamans

These are not the shamans of old.
They're hip.  They're with it.
It's their job to keep the urban jungle green and gray
and growing.

In New York

Comments

Re: O_O

[pocketnaomi]

Sane was very much a part of this reality; he was well known in New York and I was privileged to know him personally a very little, when we were both in school. One weekend we came to school Monday morning to find that he had covered the entire city-block-sized courtyard wall of the school with an enormous, beautiful, multicolor dragon. Of course the school, with vastly more bureaucracy than common sense, saw it as defacement and painted over it within two days while delivering stern warnings to the entire student body (they knew Sane was one of us, but not which one, and we sure weren't telling). I wish I'd thought to get a photo of it while it was still there, but it was transient; by Thursday the wall was blank again. Only our memories remained, but those are vivid to this day.

I lost track of him after high school, and only knew he was still there by the occasional spraypainted artwork signed with the familiar tag. I only heard concrete news of him when he died, which made the newspapers. For a long time after that, especially in the bad neighborhoods of the outer boroughs where there was little money for cleanup or renovation, I'd still see occasional pieces of his work. Not anymore. The tag is legendary among New York graffiti artists, and therefore there are still people who scribe it places -- not really, I don't think, trying to claim to be him; more making sure he's remembered. But it's just the tag, not attached to the kind of amazing art that he signed with that name, so I know that Sane himself wasn't there. New York is poorer without him.

Re: O_O

[ysabetwordsmith]

Fascinating.

Some people stick around after death, and are capable of making their presence known. Maybe he just wanted to remind folks that he's still keeping an eye on the city, and thought that nabbing a verse in the poem would be a good way to do that.

Re: O_O

[pocketnaomi]

Could be. If he is still around at all, I certainly expect he's still keeping tabs on New York City; he always did.