by P.G. McNabb
I.
Tufts of prairie
Surround a driftless industrial
Cathedral, with elephant skin
And stained glass pox of spray paint.
The volume of grain demanded
Enormous gear to grind the silage
Which one time made the air breathe thick
As batter; it’s heavy, still, but with different
Refinement: dust, asbestos, the grist of time
Inhaled by young persons in search
Of palliatives for boredom. “Abandoned”
Could not describe those buildings: they capture
Attention. Everything is interesting
When it’s out of order, out of the order
Obscuring a dream – a petty misdemeanor
Graffiti can’t wake from. It’s hard to imagine
The last days the mill was operational,
That there ever was any purpose beside
The curiosity served as a ruin of our own.
Barbarous children must also have trashed
The Acropolis before the couple
Hundred necessary years had passed
To make it a monument of something
We will always be too young to remember.
Flour built a temple, too, for people need
To eat some bread and earn some dough and
Spray some paint, so there might be an ornament.
Different people come for different things
But all enthralled by the broken casements
On bygone work of hidden generations
Who built our world and left
Some wasted castles behind haphazard.
II.
Efforts were made by sealing entrances
To reduce the risks for personal injury.
Getting inside was never the same way
Twice. Once, an open window granted
Passage to the ground-floor level.
Generators rusted in the damp – depressed
And inutile – like a third-rate
Duchamp gathering vacant fuel
In an ancient lot. A sepia shroud dressed
The dead room, stagnant water glittered.
By keeping tight to the wall, you could creep
Around, reach the stairs, and make your way
To successive galleries of babbling graffiti.
Across that concrete canvas, talent
Was interrupted and often crowded
By amateurism – as in any museum.
III.
But vandals only deface what’s valueless
To them; so when style was in the room,
Rules were observed: like no one fucked with
The really good graffiti, and if they did,
Their tag would suffer a thousand imprecations
From connoisseurs who saw it the same way
Modernists see the activists
Throwing motor oil on Vincent Van Gogh.
There are many among us who hear
Only half the music.
But one sterling
Mural in black & white remained
Unchallenged by the recursive tags of
Disparate crews that dripped from the wall
Like bukkake. Depicted was a cartoon city
Alight with black flame: humanoid wolves
Bore cyclops eyes, stalked the streets,
And cracked civilians with ebony clubs.
A simple lyric, maybe title, hung at
The left in capital letters: RATIONAL
ANIMAL. But there wasn’t a tag
To take the credit.
Danger increased
With every elevation. Aluminum stairs
Moved from story to story. Machinery,
Shoots, and gothic levers stood patiently
Waiting to resume the work that kept on
Somewhere else – a protestant sense
Of wakefulness. But there were signs
Of someone resting – mattress, empties,
Orange caps, panties, jackknife, bloody.
Darker forms of life had filled the vacuum:
A process paralleled in shipwreck.
The diver must fear what he finds
Plucked from land and plunged through fathoms
Of time tearing apart the matter, returning
Each object to prima materia.
A sense of being
Underwater was also felt at three hundred
Feet in the air – the top of the mill
Awarded surveillance over the city
To the morbidly curious who cleared
The top unseen. Unknown is how the
Eponymous tag was rolled on fourteen
Consecutive grain elevators – a silo
For every letter in UNITED CRUSHERS.
Everyone authors the story: anecdotes
Circulate – a friend of a friend
Of a friend will know a guy in the
Crew, but still they can’t clarify
The obvious technical challenges
That marvel the metro audience.
IV.
It happened at night.
Were grappling hooks used? Or
Did they paint it upside-down?
How many hours – start to finish?
Mu-dog said they were drunk and dangled
Each other by ankles to roll on the piece.
The work’s placement upset a losing
Proposition, challenging gallery standards.
V.
Breadth of triumph widens in relation
To its means and their concealment from
Our understanding. Nobody understands
Exactly how the painting was completed,
And even if they could, they couldn’t comprehend
The risk involved in pulling it off and why
Anyone would want to take it.
Enigma
Enfolded on enigma bind to suggest an
Achievement. Life was staked against
The mark and cultic fame flourished.
It’s for these reasons, UNITED CRUSHERS
Must be considered a MAJOR WORK. The
City claims it for its landmark, another
Aesthetic insurrection absorbed by
An institution – vandalism canonized
As infrastructure. And shadows
Cast round its stature: chronicles of
Death, assault, and drug manufacture
Inspired the total foreclosure of egress:
Immovable mass of concrete placed
In front of doors and ground-level windows.
The palimpsestic gallery of graffiti is
Entombed and inaccessible for further
Consideration – murals borne on fugitive
Minds cast back to their hollows and pulled
From the audience, practically nonexistent.
But nothing forgotten ever is lost,
And minor work gets cut off the line.
The highest point was reached by spry drunks
With white paint – and there they left
Their mark on the wintering imagination
Of Minneapolis, Minnesota.
P.G. McNabb lives and writes in Minneapolis. His work also appears in The Metropolitan Review, Reap Thrill, and SPECTRA.