Seeking asylum in a slogan,
I came your way, and you were gone.
Along that misnamed Canal Walk
the railway’s looming curtain wall
strides parallel, is overlooked
by brutal sixties council blocks.
There, in deliberate two foot
capitals, loaded with purpose
and almost forty years timeworn,
the brush-stroked statement, green on grime:
“WE LOVE THE VIETCONG”.
Before advent of day-glo spray,
before stencils and CCTV,
whose dissenting hand and eye
conspired to frame this risky sutra?
Back, when bovver booted skinheads
made fearful my own middle-class
teenage long hair and platform soul;
when the message was the message,
not some braggart’s frontier tag.
Now crumbly pointing gets rebuilt;
those painted words bricked over,
forgotten fellow travellers.
But no more writing on the walls,
move on. The rest is masonry.
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