BANKSY ( ? )

O Mystery Man, who are you
With your stencils and spray can?
Are you a vandal or a vampire
That only ventures out at night,
Wearing, perhaps, a helmet with a light?

A rioter throws a bouquet;

An athlete throws a bomb;
That little Vietnamese napalm girl
Is taken for walk, holding hands
With Ronald McDonald and Micky Mouse.
There’s kissing cops as Christ shops ‘til he drops;
A street-cleaner spraying over cave paintings
And another covering up Pink Floyd’s Wall.
Mona Lisa turns, lifts her skirt, shows her bum,
And there round the corner is Queen Victoria in heels
And suspenders, getting head from a lesbian chum
While a Royal Guardsmen pisses up another wall.
The Grim Reaper appears on a Bristol pleasure boat;
A hoodie runs off with an Olympic ring;
And a child’s balloon is the letter ‘o’ in ‘No Future’.
A graffiti kid remembers when this was all trees
As seas rise in warning, threatening to submerge
The legend, ‘I don’t believe in global warming’.

Not just another arsehole with an aerosol

Then, who can neither draw nor write,
Scribbling and dribbling pathetic tags
Like long-lasting litter or dog-shite:
Not simply then, yet more urban blight.

But Banksy, you mystic of the mural -

Are you singular or are you plural?
Turning antics into antiques, what a nerve!
But maybe you’re right, in the end, to aver
That society gets the kind of vandalism it deserves.

(2015)

 

I had started showing these 'painter poems' to a couple of friends and one of them suggested I 'do Banksy', which might not have occurred to me - happily, I think it turned out quite well so thanks for the suggestion Professor Newsinger.