Haring’s Back
Keith Haring’s back in the building
Sly street sleuth/ who took on the Stedelijk ceiling
Greedy for space/ that he can’t help stealing…………
An urban Michelangelo/ with his Sistine chapel
Haring spilled ink for the pristine rabble
On Downtown streets/ of the Big Bad Apple
With a posse a poppers
Lookin out for coppers
In the subways On the buses.
People asked what all the fuss was
He took advantage—–went on a rampage
Shiny baby / Back of his hoodie
No turf safe—and!! Why shoulddy?
Around the clock, On every block
Dodgin piggies like a hawk
With his paint can/ and his chalk
His work could soothe/ and sometimes shock…………
Sometimes he got cuffed,
A little bit roughed
15 minutza fame/ was not enough
He had a vision/ to be showed
But didn’t include
That he’d grow old
Art outlaw on the slink
An epidemic of spitting ink
And don’t y’all find it thrilling
We got Haring back in that building!
*
Anarchy from a paint can
Instead of bombs there were
more benign explosions
Erupting at peak hours in subway stations
And other public thoroughfares
Throughout NY City 1984
This highly combustible kamikaze
movement of straat kunst was igniting
Led by bespectacled Keith Haring and his
tribe of merry anarchists
Enflaming enraging, ultimately informing
the engaged and the ignorant about
sex, drugs, apartheid and AIDS,
not necessarily in that order
Undercover, underground
Methodically marking their turf
They emerged, the images stayed.
And though Haring left the playground too soon.
He clearly made his mark. Indelibly. Eternal Ink.
*
Neon Haring
It was Joe’s first visit to NYC and he was determined that I show him a good time.
Not the usual stuff like
the Empire State Building or
the World Trade Center,
We didn’t want to pay a price to
look down on my city when
we could look up for free on any corner
uptown or downtown. East side or west.
We followed the waterfront in that spring of ‘84. From the low numbers to Alphabet City
We didn’t have the bread or the threads to drop in at Odeon, Indochine or
the other hip watering holes that Andy
and his crowd had taken over.
We grabbed hot dogs on the run, ate Piroski at
Yonah Schimmel’s, noodles at the hole
in the wall in Chinatown.
One night we got into CBGB’s after I distracted the doorman with a magic trick that involved matches
and a banana.
We were packing Cuervo Gold and the Butthole surfers—or was it Thelonious Monster?—were destroying the decibels, so we blew the joint and wandered
to a nearby playground
Perching ourselves on the top rung
of the jungle gym.
in a tranquil tequila haze.
Out of nowhere the 2am silence got broken
As a skinny guy in a hoodie, black jeans and Chucks
raced by like his hair was on fire.
Followed by two of NY’s so-called finest,
Was that him? Could it be?
All we caught was a ghost with a paint can
in a neon reflection
from a silent storefront.