Madmen (Unwritten Truth)

The truth is just art laid bare
in its fastidious museum.
The poems are just the labels for it.
The admission is free, but we
pay it anyway.

I told you how I write poems with wings
then keep them in the cage of my heart
until needed for a just cause.

Even though the world needs my poems,
it will only dissect them with knives
and pound them with hammers;
reduce them to bitter truths.

They won't fly once wounded,
Just flap and stagger in circles.
I swear their portraits will be
hung in museums one day,
and their bones put on display
by the real artists, the mad ones.

I held a bird in my hand once,
so tightly that it couldn't fly away,
I only let it imagine the sky in its midst
and people looking up at it.

I wanted it to know how it was so much more
than what people see,
how it could become a blur
when the wind catches it right
and be illumimated by flight.

The birds tiny eyes were just like everyones;
a bird is just a bag of bones
under its magical feathers.

      .....

#BillyCollins