Graffiti on the 17th Avenue Trestle by Milan Smith

Milan Smith has published poems in Clockwise Cat, The Writer's Eye Magazine, Every Day Poets, and Dreams and Nightmares. He's also published 30 short stories in magazines such as Big Pulp, Midnight Times, and Crimson Highway. After he got his B.S. degree in business from the University of Florida, he worked in the business world for two years, and hated it. Then he got job as a reporter at for a year, and hated that. Finally, he decided to try writing, and now works part-time at night and writes during the mornings, and he loves it.

Upon this trestle
you can watch them paint the slogans of their lives
in red and blue and green,
with hearts and stars as illustrations and
words more art than thought –
they hate this war, or
love that girl,
they praise anarchy or spit on the system,
while some support a cause no one’s ever heard of.
The trestle changes face so often it seems alive, and
restless, with thoughts of its own.
But, once the trestle runs out of space,
as it will,
the old works are purged, and
the blue skies with the shiny raindrops
are scrawled over with the names of the dead,
victims of some crime, personal or political, and
when the dead are forgotten, or
just been dead long enough,
the living return with a fury fueled by a youth
not yet aged by work and wife and life and
they tear down the old,
they erase everything of yesterday,
proclaim today has arrived, and
the old shuffle from the scene
to raise their families and sell their dreams for a dollar, and
again the trestle blooms with the colors and cries
of the young who thrill at screaming their song
on this corner of the city,
on this piece of their world. They’re happy
to paint their souls on the city’s blackboard,
to let the world know they’re there,
for their one moment in life,
then they too pass on,
and are soon forgotten.