Chuquai Billy
I went to the Dutch Town of Deventer
A little place that sits on a river at the edge of time,
Dragging along my life in a damaged suitcase
Like a witness running in slow-motion from a crime.
We claimed the dusty-antique building,
Its mortar lain by men 200 years before,
We drifted through shadows and echoing halls
Which had once sheltered the Dogs of War.
But we are armed with pallets of graffiti
And theories of modern creative design
Varied explosions of colour which we freely leave behind.
But the long life of the old building comes to its inevitable end,
Evicting optimism like the squatting artists so hard to defend,
And the building was seized and boarded resold and horded,
It’s now the back end of a shopping mall
It stands still and unseen like it was never there at all.
