I have begun writing fantasy/fantastic poetry again for fun. This one is fun!
The Hand
The old man we called The Hand
Wrote on Everything in our town:
Top to bottom and inside and out,
He covered our walls with words.
He wrote with paints and pencils and pens,
Scribbled words with knives and sharp rocks and bone.
With his fingers dabbed daubed poetry
using mud and blood and juice and pie.
The Hand wrote poetry and prose on walls;
Shopping lists and bucket lists on doors;
History and predictions and fictions on chimneys;
Sonnets on monuments and drama on outhouse walls‒
Inside and out.
Thatch was rewoven in the dead of night
So words leaked wetly down onto bedroom floors.
He liked to paint curse words
On passing migrating birds.
He wrote "Suddenly, there's bears!"
Down the Midwife's stairs.
In time he wrote on our bodies as well:
He tattooed us from head to toe to tail.
Hide and seek is not a game our children play:
It is our daily life as graffitis of bodies
wander our graffiti streets.
The old man we called The Hand
Wrote his way into our lives
For uncounted years until he died.
We found his lettered body by smell
Leaning cold against the lettered well.
His lettered bones lie there still.
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