An outlaw but not a criminal, the poetry and chalk art of Barry Zimmerman
NORMAN, Okla. – It's late evening, long after sundown.
Light and shadow are equals at this hour.
Moonlight, neon, and even Miller Lite are modern flame to a college town's night life at the Deli on Campus Corner where blues music and the poetry of a legally blind man named Barry Zimmerman hold forth.
"Poem," he announces at the start of each work. "Woke up with a toothache and a hole in my favorite bag..." starts one stanza.
"I was born a poet," Barry states.
He came to Norman in the late 80s, worked odd jobs, managing all the while, on breaks, to feed the creatures that filled his own universe.
"...hiding in a storm cloud trying cheese for the first time," finishes another short poem about aliens visiting earth.
"I close my eyes and kind of create my own landscape," he adds.
His visions are revealed in pictures too in surprise messages on sidewalks or outdoor spaces.
"I used to be out all night," he tells us as we walk near campus. "Now I get in about 2 or 3 a.m. I like the idea of people showing up and there's this thing there, and they have no idea how it happened. It's my way of saying hello and still remaining my locked off self."
Zimmerman was hired on as a janitor at the University of Oklahoma for a number of years, and found his way to empty classrooms.
The big blackboards there fed his almost manic need to fill them.
He says, "There's a deadline. Between now and the time I'm not walking around I got to draw or write music, or doing my thing, because there's going to be a day where I can't do that anymore."
He might complete three or four works in a single night.
Once finished, they are quickly erased, saved only through photographs and on social media.
"I'm not trying to do any harm," he insists. "I'm not a criminal. I'm drawing and moving on."
Barry Zimmerman prefers the night and the solitude, and the singular visions he creates through word and magic, yellow dust.
If you'd like to see more of Barry Zimmerman's artwork or read his poetry, go to his page on Facebook.