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Hand Puppets


Hard, calloused and dirty, it pleaded with me.
It had no eyes, no face, no soul.  Or so I thought,
or didn’t.  Yellowed fingernails, dirt covered and
trembling faced upward as would a beggar’s
face.  A sound, perhaps its voice, startled me.  I
heard nothing but the plea from the open, soiled,
begging hand.  It seemed to say:  “please, sir, please,
I was once like you, one of you.  I worked, as you can
tell by the sinewy strength now buried in despair’s dirt.
I touched – the cheeks of loved ones.  I held – an infant,
a child, my child, and somehow lost my grip on all.
I have felt tears, my own tears, running through clenched
fingers yet not knowing whose tears they were or for whom
they were shed.  I know cold, bone chilling, painful cold
and stiffness borne of pain, yet cannot, or will not,
reach for help and so I beg.  Namelessly, facelessly,
but not shamelessly.  For if I had eyes, I could not look
you in the face, nor could I smile or frown, or say thank you.
I am but a proffered hand in need, not of help but of
sustenance, not of kindness but of indifference, not of
awakening but of oblivion.”

I listened to the hand, looked not upon the face, and placed
a pittance against the enormity of the lifelines torment
and walked away.  I looked at my hands and wondered
what story they told to those who took the time to look
at them, to listen to them.  I covered my face with them,
and I too felt tears running through clenched fingers,
not knowing whose tears they were
or for whom they were shed.


John G. Lawless
2013

submitted to – Your best free verse poem – 
sponsor – SKAT A

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