THE YOUNG MAN WITH THE WOODEN HANDS

OCTOBER - TIME FOR THE STRANGE, WEIRD, CREEPY

AND THE MACABRE!

THE YOUNG MAN WITH THE WOODEN HANDS


Over on the banks of the river
where the townsfolk divided their time,
there lived a man whose hands
were made of wood - polished
to a deep, rich gleam. They were
walnut stained, for no other reason than
he was as poor as a piper.
(Walnut stain was free for the indigent
and no one pays a piper.)


The hands were grainy, with intricate
one-of-a-kind patterns, figures, and whorls.
Dark wooden hands - do dark wooden deeds.
(Didn’t he beat Elaine to death?)
Ended up in some archaic prison.


His hands were his undoing.
He died fairly young. Asbestos Poisoning.
His wooden fingers wouldn’t let the pipe
cover alone during those years spent in
the prison’s machine shop. (Pick, pick - Chink, chink.)
Lethal white dust.
(Jesus, didn’t he write his name in that stuff?)


He was laid out in his mother’s parlor.
(Slicked down black hair - red lips,
pink circled cheeks, eel’s skin suit.)
But, where were the wooden hands?
The dark, grainy, walnut hands that made
him who he was and who he was not?
His mother’s teeth clicked as she said,
“Oh, I could never get rid of them.
They’re in a shoebox, under his bed.