You, The Creator

With the skill of an artist’s touch on canvas, or a piece of fabric, or a block, or a blank page, something emerges, something within expressed outwardly, as if by magic.

I’m no magician, but sometimes when the moon is in its waxing phase, and all the children are resting soundly in their beds, I can reach up on my tippy toes, stretching my arms so incredibly hard that I can almost touch a star.

Art is an act I was not. Since I can’t be something I never was, I wasn’t.

I learned to bury it, six feet under, and to be honest, no one grieved – not even me.

Hands then clapped and brushed themselves off to go forward, always forward, trudging the life set up for me.

But yet I can’t say when, and I can’t know how, why, or who. But somewhere in the racing and the spacing came a fissure or a crack – who the heck knows – and it allowed a doubt to creep in.

What is an artist? I asked, and I screamed, and I dreamed.

What is an artist! Other than nothing and everything in between.

Eleven brightly-colored birds are on a wire, their twenty-two beady eyes fire. The question, “Why not you”?

Perhaps I was mistaken, or maybe I was never not right. In the headstrong stride, I chose to march to the commanding beat of a heart thumping drumming in time.

I am a creator. I’m a stand-up on the soapbox in a superhero costume for pennies and dollars visionary kind of a guy.

There’s an empty box. Just over there. Get up on it. Don’t make me ask twice.

Wait, do you see the little girl. She’s looking. Right at you. Up at you. You’re who I want to be too.

I’m glad you’re here. And before you go, take a look, one last and final look. At all we’ve created together.

It’s magic, don’t ya think?

J.L.