writing from
Scars Publications

Audio/Video chapbooks cc&d magazine Down in the Dirt magazine books

 

Palmistry




Robert Michael O'Hearn


A small hand blooms, opening flowerless
from a comical fist, cherishing resolve
quite apart from its apparent inaction.
A still hand quite voluntarily revealing
a humble hand, replete with striated lines,
regaling with almost missionary dispatch
a life story, sometimes better left untold.

Both palms appear to you like inset maps
of zigzag roadways depicted in atlases,
coordinates of an unbalanced tipsy life,
like the imbibers silly walk, coming back
at you, breathing hands-down authority.
The day's convoluted mileage snakes onward
as if life lived on a revoked driver's license,
traveling incognito on over back roads.
Lest you forget how to get properly lost?

In truth, my left palm resembles almost
a too perfect portrait inked by the hand
of a Norman Rockwell-like artist. Smooth,
too orderly of lines depicting this life,
of how life might have been or should have
turned out for the better, had I never
browsed enthusiastically through travel brochures,
had I always been more of a pragmatist,
more of a Catholic, drank more holy Perrier water,
blessed with a slice of lemon.

Most lines seem smoother than superhighway lanes.
Other lines seem to flare, shuffled off to the side
with occasional chaotic jagged lines resurfacing
like the character lines on a well worn face,
aged prematurely, blessed with eyes sadder but wiser.
The main line, my heart-line remains fairly straight
and strongly accentuated, somewhat shortchanged
on my right palm, referent to the actual life lived
than the potential on my left palm wants to reveal.

Both lifelines on each palm seem longer than deserved.
Whatever else said, further smacks of a life history
fraught with inconsistency, if not inaccuracy.
The headline hints of a capacity for intellect,
for emotional balance appears deeply furrowed
on both palms, as if steeped in signifying anger
more imitative than intentional: Blinder
in plot to circumscribed reality than what,
until now, my clenched fist thought it knew.



Scars Publications


Copyright of written pieces remain with the author, who has allowed it to be shown through Scars Publications and Design.Web site © Scars Publications and Design. All rights reserved. No material may be reprinted without express permission from the author.




Problems with this page? Then deal with it...