Reader’s Favorite Graffiti (1983)

Source: Marina N. Naan & Richard B. Hammerstrom. (1983). Reader’s favorite graffiti. Brown House Galleries.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This post isn’t really a book chapter, but it’s the only place where it even remotely fits.

When I started a master’s program in psychology at the University of Tennessee, in the fall of 1974, I found the graffiti in the South College Building cynical and wonderfully creative.  It was so good (I then thought) I wrote down much of it.

When, in the early 1980s, I read a book about graffiti by Marina Naan and Richard Hammerstrom, I sent them these selections for a forthcoming volume. It was and remains my only involvement with graffiti.

My mother made me a homosexual

(below)

If I give her the wool will she make me one too?

Boogie till you puke!

(below)

Obviously an anorectix.

(bel0w)

Obviously an illiterate.

(below)

Not so! I know for a fact that his mother and father were married!

(appearing below sexist remark)

Oh, yeah! Go catch herpes!

(bel0w)

Get a hernia!

(below)

Histerectomy.

(below)

Mangles.

(below)

Malencholy.

(bel0w)

Sonburned.

(below)

Sheet-faced.

And this one, which I first heard when I was seven years old and only vaguely knew the parts of anatomy under discussion:

She was goin’ round the mountain

doing ninety miles an hour

when the chain on her motorcycle broke.

Now she’s lying in the grass

with the sprocket up her ass

and her titties playing Dixie in the spokes.

Finally, there’s this one, which I found on the wall of Brown’s Diner in Nashville. It’s my favorite and the one I would today deign to collect.

If God were but an airship

And his children round balloons

we’d sing our prayers in helium

and dance across the moon.

Nashville has always been full of poets and songwriters.