painting by Catrin Welz-Stein
The Key
“ We just need to find the key the unlocks the
right doors.”--Dan Groat.
When Randall was thirteen,
the world revealed itself to him
like a Monarch bursting
out of its dun cocoon.
All the good stuff--
literature,
art,
poetry,
cinema,
theater,
nature &
girls.
He was ecstatic to discover
the he was was
budding writer,
artist and acrobat.
Nature sang auras
drenched in sunrises
warmed by tropical breezes,
protected by mountain gods.
He was small for his age,
became branded as a Nerd,
was bullied by other less talented students
and was adored by his teachers.
He loved Shakespeare,
and he wrote a one act play
all about a special boy
who was bullied.
One day he invented a magic hat
that was shaped like a lighthouse
and it had a mystical lock on its side.
He fashioned a wondrous key
for the hat in metal shop
and it was a perfect fit.
He felt from that day forward
that all problems had solutions
and his key unlocked the answers.
When he was 23, sitting
in a prison cell, he began to write
his three-act plays, all about those
vulnerable young boys who went
to college, fell in with a fast crowd,
got into drugs, became an addict
and a dealer, became lost souls
who went down in flames.
His hat became
a cone of shame,
a beret of regret.
The only keys he ever saw
were on the belt of the guards.
A song lyric buzzed in his head;
“another one bites the dust.”
Glenn Buttkus
