DAY 18: A few fragments

So today I went on a field trip with my Creative Writing students to the American Visionary Arts Museum in Baltimore. HOLY CRAP! If you have not been, you need to go.


The three hours we spent there was an exercise in unfair.

Everyone should go.

Here is something that came out of the trip.




"I'm trapped inside that apple tree"
he told them, but they had heard that sort of talk before.
When you work with shizophrenics,
you get used to the splinters of words that snag
you as you walk down the hall.

But somehow, he convinced them to take
the tree that had fallen on the west end
of the asylum back to the common area.

And this man, who had never
out pen to page, brush to canvas
said "I need to create myself in my own image."

So they let him.
Once per day,
under strict supervision,
he chipped and chiseled away.

And when he was done,
it was exactly as he appeared
the chest caved in from his
ongoing struggle with tuberculosis
like the soil over the uprooted tree
he used to recreate himself.

There was no exageration,
the eyes that were carve into the wood
were the same sad ones that strolled
through the courtyards.

But unlike him, this sculpture
th only work he would ever create
would be remembered
and last
forever.