Bill Graeser

Although he had not the hands to crochet, the patience to build birdhouses or the nerve to push a hook through a worm in the hope of pulling a fish from the sea, he did write poems and wrote often and late into the night.  Was it pain that made him write?  The pain of all those stitches, of shoes that despite their size were still too small?  Was it psychological pain of social non-acceptance?  Or the electricity that years later still snapped between his fingers?

No, it was simply what his brain wanted to do, the brain they dug up and sowed into his head, it was just grave-robbing luck.  At poetry readings, where everyone is welcome, he read his poems sounding like a man who having fallen into a well and cried out for years was now finally being heard.

Like this there are many so-called monsters with poems to share.  The same is true of angels, of gangsters, shepherds, anyone who fits words together like body parts, revises, revises again, until magically, beautifully, lightning leaps from the pen and the poem opens its eyes, sits up from the page, staggers into the world, and whether it is seen as monster, or friend, it is alive, every word it says is real and it comes not from the grave, but from the sky.