Wallspeak

image by glenn buttkus

Wallspeak

“Even paradise could become a prison if one had

enough time to take notice of the walls.”

--Morgan Rhodes.

There are a few of us left,

     deep in the inner cities--walls

           on ancient buildings, walls of brick,

                     that back in the 20’s & 30’s were 

           decorated with billboard art, hand

     painted advertisements, many 

over the top of others, now

resembling a decopasge,

or several layers of peeling

wallpaper, just

                           part of a musty past that did not

                  have the media options to boost sales

          & public exposure. I’m still shocked to hear 

  that most people spend 12 bucks to see a single

movie and then have to sit through a tedious myriad

of television commercials on the sainted silver screen

                        while suffering the indignation of having

                        a third of the audience playing with their

                        smart phones throughout the feature.

I am the north wall of the exalted Pythian Temple, 
crumbling bravely on Broadway in the theater district in
Tacoma. I face a parking lot, where once a department store
stood shoulder to shoulder with me. My aching bricks are
festooned with fading overlapping ads for cigars, jewelry, a
painless dentist, Turkish cigarettes, & the New York &
Washington Outfitting Co, where “a dollar a week will dress you”, 
sad smile, or at least it would in 1924.

The Temple used to house over a hundred members, rich

businessmen (all fat white cats--no Jews or ethnic minor
-ities), the Donalds of their day, rivaling the Masons &
Kiwanis. There are less than twenty members at present, old
men in moldy double-breasted suits, huddled in dark corners
smoking pungent cigars--while hybrid & electric cars
back into me, smashing my ankles, graffiti swaths cover a
section of me by the alley, drunks urinate on me after dark,
& most folks just pass by hurriedly without greeting or
acknowledging me. Such is the plight of most century old
walls.

I realize that I have a fateful date with a behemoth

wrecking ball soon. There’s a rumor that following

my unceremonious demolishment the pesky parking

lot adjacent to me will double in size; terrific--then

folks who work downtown can cough up 20 bucks

a day to park their jalopies on my proud bones. Yes.

progress can be both trollop & succubus.

Pioneer buildings

are rarely saved by those who

need a place to park. 

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over at dVerse Poets Pub