oh sometimes, I look for an invisible poet
living in my head.
I recall the days when words flew out of my fingertips
typing, writing, scribbling anywhere and everywhere
I would be on the bus, on my way to see an art exhibit
down south of the town
where art was just a name for broken buildings and demolished dreams
I thought they were beautiful because someone used to live there
someone decorated that place with curtains and pictures of their dogs on the mantle
but that someone is no longer there.
I sit there in front of the broken house, on the un-mowed lawn,
the weed and the dirt tickling my legs
I imagine what it was like to live in the ghost town
to have a life, to have a wife, to have a family.
I know it was a man who lived in this home
because his flannel shirt still hangs on the washing line
was he killed? did he have a stroke? did he lose his job? where is his dog?
I write.
I write the story of a man I’ve never met in a place down the south that does not exist
because my mind works in strange ways
I see things others don’t. Some call me crazy.
Am I?
Shame on you if you believed magic was real!
Or if you really thought dragons once lived.
It drives me crazy how I see a man in a broken home, his flannel shirt flying
against the wind
and
I get sent into therapy.