Here is a new on-the-spot. I’ve been reading the Unwritten comic book series, and so I’ve had story-telling and literary figures on my mind more often than usual. Below is my twist on the Pinocchio story, plus one of my really awful attempts at accompanying art.
How to Be a Real Boy
Let’s just say your nose
was so long it started making people
feel uncomfortable,
you know,
because it reminded them of something
they wanted to be doing,
like telling the truth,
or something a little bit
harder,
like,
like,
well you can figure that out.
Let’s just say,
that you wanted to be a real boy
so badly,
that you were willing to cut your strings
early on,
gesticulating with your wooden hands,
and trying to give the center finger,
but failing to do so
because you cut it off
by accident.
The other puppets laughed,
their lungs filled with wood dust
and their mouths shaved and whittled into a perfect O
as if surprise were more common
than the elongation of smoothed probosces,
meant to be the width of a button,
meant to extend no longer than
a pen.
But your nose comes standard; truth instead, your prosthetic limb.
When your snout began to produce branches,
(the result of lies leading to more lies)
birds started to roost, chirping as birds do,
spreading your stories in song.
And so you became the teller of stories,
your feet planting seeds into the earth,
your nose ceasing its growth,
no longer able to distinguish
between lie and truth.