No Hands

That the man with no hands
has a collectivity of gloves
is quite okay, we'll just wingnut it
cause he's not insane, no more
than any other sad-eyed fetishist
who keeps what he can't even use
Meissen tea cups and porcelain dolls
or cracked Japanese Kintsugi pots
repaired with lacquer dusted
in gold platinum or silver
the repair-ware an object in itself
and nobody thinks they're nuts

until they try to use these things
strings of gloves or single socks
roped into tight little nooses
for asphyxiated sex routines
that sometimes go wrong
but how can one avoid mishaps
when people are hanged from door handles
or willow trees past weeping
or when a prince regrets Ophelia's fate
too late to act as if it's still fun
so let's rapier someone good
this tragedy needs some blood

No Hands

it's why Eliot paints his face green
and his lips red (said Ms Woolf)
and parades through the Ripper's streets
in his four-piece banker's suit
the better to write about mint tea
or a mermaid in pink slippers;
we do not know, we do not know
what drives this fine excess
the longing suppressed for a child
in peccary-leathered fingerless gloves
the undeclared bourne of infinite harm
the sound of the handless one clapping