An eye for an eye

Is this transgressive?

Does the eye that I spy capture my path through the city?

Does it crack out a warning that I’m on the wrong track?

Is my focus awry if I try not to deny the other side?

Or is that for the electrified lens, the automated view?

The image shot unthinking, the hi-tech automata,

Grabbing identikit scenes like a tourist by the Tyne,

Unthinking, unknowing.

Perhaps this is the eye of creativity,

The last stand for humanity as the concrete closes in.

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The photo shows a piece of graffiti I spotted on an unlovely walkway in Newcastle-upon-Tyne while seeking bits of brutalist architecture.

This is lost territory. Nobody lingers, it’s a world of surveillance cameras and broken glass straddling a highway dedicated to machines. In a city with a preening self-image of riverside nightlife and culture, it’s a half-hidden secret.

And the sudden glimpse of beauty - and this spray-painted eye is truly beautiful - shone out at me like a flower breaking through the paving slabs.

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I wrote this in response to the First Prompt challenge by Aspen Marie. Click the link to check out the challenge, and the other entries so far.