The man controls the puppet,
The second it is finally made-
And goes on to make the rest
To fulfill a romantic charade.

He doesn’t know how he does it,
So easily and so fine!
The way he coaxes limbs to move
And speaks so unearthly divine!

They are all beautiful and polished
Marionettes orderly in a row-
Painted, polished, ‘talented’-
Let’s see how many he knows!

There’s a braided beauty,
Straw and sticks and bricks-
She acts as her own shelter
With some underhanded tricks.

The mermaid is the most obvious,
His favorite with sequined fin,
Bright eyes like the ocean-
A voice from a musical within.

There’s one he got in his travels,
From the sweatshops lurking there
In coldness and anxiousness
It had a very frozen stare.

The first of them all seduced
With cat-like tempting eyes,
Like she knew too much and more
And was parallel to demise.

The trusty one in the corner,
Who’s dull with an unpolished crown,
A failed princess and a lion
And fails to get out of town.

There’s one he’s constructed in a cave,
While digging for ancient jewels,
Encrusted with value she is-
A doll that plays by all his rules.

Finally there is at last the one,
Who struggles to get far away.
She doesn’t want to end up like the others,
Bound and tied to stay.

While the puppet master is in slumber,
She takes the scissors and cuts
The strings holding her back and runs
Out the door and behind her it shuts.

She is free and gallops across the meadow,
Freedom into the setting sun,
She doesn’t look back once or twice.
Because she knows she can’t save everyone.

The puppet master finally wakes,
And finds one missing from its cell,
He weeps over his incomplete collection-
The single doll he loved never to tell.

And this is how the poem ends,
The man vanished without a trace.
He took the suitcase full of toys
And completely left his place.

The stage is bare and open,
The red curtain torn apart-
He failed to give and receive love
From a true and loving heart.