Martin Willitts, Jr.
Please scroll down to see Martin's
Paper cut art work.

The Ballerina And Hans Christian Andersen




The story begins like this:
Hans Christian Andersen is in a café
enjoying a swan boat of white chocolate
breaking pieces into feathery slices
when he sees me performing
an unconscious Ronde de Jambe
standing near the blush of lilacs.

I never was the ballerina he imaged.
That was his first mistake
as casual as forgetting a stranger’s name.
He created fiction out of nothing
more than a chance encounter.

He saw me for more than I was.
I did not ignore him although his account disagrees.
I just did not see him in the gaggle of the crowd.

There are so many misconceptions about me
dancing heavily in my vertebrate.
You have only heard his side of the story.
Now hear mine: I took these slippers
because they matched my crimson lips.

If he knew this, do you think he would imagine me so?
I think not.
If I do not tell this tale, who will?

Everyone has their own perspective.





The Ugly Duckling
(Hans Christian Andersen wrote this story about himself)


The ballerina barely noticed me among the reeds
as I paddled in the rush of broken red water.
I was an unopened book of poor matches.





The Swineherd
(Based on the story by Hans Christian Andersen)



you fan yourself with giggles
at my embarrassment as you deny me
your kiss, white as the emptiness is feeling

your laughter chorused by your friends
following me every corner I turned,
you gave me nothing but bitterness & revenge

then I whittled a whirly-jig that whistled
as a morning dove
as it cranked in your amazed hands

you traded that common toy for a kiss
knowing it was wrong, this dangerous kiss,
knowing danger is an aphrodisiac

this is why women write to men in prison,
realizing too late your mistake: everything is gone,
everything is gone, gone, gone.




The Nightingale
(Based on the story by Hans Christian Andersen)




I decreed it should be caged
however you cannot contain beauty
without pain

it became silent as moon glow
so I decreed:
construct a mechanical bird

duplicate each perfect note
like nightingale eggs
with gears that never tire

when it failed
I began my dying
decreeing it must be so

no one can do what I did
without finding blandishments
as the nightingale sang death songs for me




“I have No Success With Appearance”
(Self-description by Hans Christian Andersen)


If not for the repression of my time
I might have glanced solemnly at Edmund
as though he were a rain of bathwater
full of white pond lilies




The Little Mermaid
(A story Hans Christian Andersen was writing about himself)



My story is told in the tides.
It echoes in the nautilus chambers.
My life is fiction.
It is a story of betrayal.

Every lover speaks of change; but they never do.
I changed more than the currents change.
I could have pulled my heart out with a trident
and it still would not have been enough.

Was it worth it?
It is never enough to give up so much.
You can cut and slash red rivers from your wrists
and it would never be enough.

If I tasted salt and drowned in the heartbeat of the ocean,
it would not bring me what I desire most: to be loved.
If I wrote this pain into the whiteness of the paper,
it would not be enough, it would not be worth it.

I hear this singing deep in my heart, this urge to drown.
It draws me to the center, into a whirlpool.
Nothing stops this sinking. The cutting does not work.
I wanted someone to notice me and they did not.

Is it too late? Ask someone who cares.
My life is fiction and the story is an open wrist.
My pain is words swimming away misunderstood.
It is lost in the surge of waves smashing against rocks.

This is my story.  It is about loss & betrayal.
It is the undercurrent of despair.
Someday I will be washed away. Someday I will be loved
the way I always wanted to be loved.



The Steadfast Tin Soldier And The Ballerina
(Based on the story by Hans Christian Andersen)



I first saw him on duty, guarding the toy store,
his eyes polished as pennies, not blinking,
my hand trying to distract him as a dragonfly,

then I saw her floating on toes in slippers of rumors
and I knew I had to have her too, for my sister, for her
I would save the coins jostling in my pockets,

for my sister, whose legs were snapped into Polio braces,
for my sister who could never tiptoe
without clanging like his brash buttons,

I had to have both, the soldier for me, the dancer for her,
but when I saved enough, each day a penny, I came back
and the ballerina was missing, emptiness dancing in her place,

I believed the guard had let me down, failing to protect her,
and when I went to reprimand him, I thought he had deserted,
my disappointment pirouetting, held in metal iron braces,

I imagined he journey after her, scouring dangers,
but he had only one leg and could not have tracked her,
her being light as music, her toes on notes of lily pads,

the light coming from her body, the darkness from his,
forging into a heartbeat, one without pain and feebleness,
and in that merging something else, delicate as my sister,

then I noticed the heart-shaped pendant like love on one leg,
and when my sister wore it, for one moment,
the metal could not hold her as she lifted into my arms light,

for that moment, her body was under command,
for a moment I was the soldier being greeted after duty ends,
together our hearts melted, the moment when things break free.




The Twelve Dancing Princesses
(Based on a Hans Christian Anderson story)



The idea of solving the mystery was twelve women dancing.
So many had failed to solve the mystery and lost their heads.
I am an old soldier and I have seen many strange things

so I traveled towards death like any battle.
I hardly knew where I was going. My scars were valleys
and I had nothing to lose. I was so poor I could not afford to die.

So when I saw the bottoms of their slippers had holes, I knew
they could dance me to death, they could swirl as whirlwinds
and dance my eyes to sleep so I would not discover their secrets.

I pretended to sleep, the kind of sleep only a soldier knows,
where every sound could kill you and you feel shadows,
the kind of sleep that is not sleep, but is night terrors.

I was invisible to them as they lifted a bed to an underground stairs,
to a lake with twelve canoes paddled by a prince
to dance nightly until they shoes were thin as vanity.

Sometimes winning a contest is not worth it, sometimes the prize
is lowered expectations, sometimes you walk away disgusted,
sometimes you find an answer old as war and death.



Paper-Cut
(Based on the paper cutouts of Hans Christian Andersen)



The world is too harsh for me.
No one wants a grown man telling stories.
This is why I travel with scissors.
It is so I can cut out the parts I do not like.
I fold reality into uncomfortable paper and snip.
When I open the paper, a new reality emerges.

My grandfather wore a crown of colored paper.
He understood human nature.
Let me cut a hole in the air to get to the other side.
My grandmother is waiting for me there,
walking a tightrope of spider webs.

Now I suppose you want some happy ending.

Your expectation is a collage from my scissors.
I stitch words with a needle. Yet this does not stop
the insanity of war and boredom. You cut me out.
I see distortion in the world.
What you see is what you get.
Like scissors falling out of my pocket,
words are not so easily dismissed. They snip.

If I break the symmetry, will you notice?
Reality is now unfolded.




Hans Christian Andersen Has A Tale He Does Not Want To Tell


I am not wanted. I know this. I know this now.
So this darkness, it is the only thing that is mine.
If you slice an apple one way,
you find seeds pressed together, nursing.
If you cut another way, you find a star.
It is all in how you cut, not the type of knife.

But it is also how the apple whispers as it falls.
If you are careful, you can cut it so it does not part.
I once split an apple with a piece of paper.
It separated into verbs and nouns.
It became a man and woman arguing.

I want you to notice some things you have ignored.
Let me give you an example:

Did the apple reject its bruises,
or was the rejection bruised by an apple;
or does it matter that the apple is gone before it is eaten?
This is my life and I am not welcome.
I know this.
I know this every time a woman rejects me,
or the rain turns me away, or the candle
echoes my name and says go away.



The Storyteller

(Based on the life of Hans Christian Andersen)


This is my story of confession and absolution

the missing and the found



this is not what you want to hear



you want me to make a story out of nothing

like an emperor’s invisible cloth



enough to make everyone clap child-like

"Woman and water jug" is my Chinese style, showing a woman in motion so she looks like waves of water.

Songbirds.is a combination of both styles. It is folded in half then cut Chinese style with Chinese landscape, yet the bird in the picture can be
found in both cultures.

The woman with the jug is from a lesser known Japanese tale of "Three Strong Woman" in which she is "carrying the bucket of tears for all the
saddness in the world, becaue only a woman can carry that much pain." It is one of my most powerful stories.

"The songbird is a bird of joy bringing forth a new day. This is the symbolism of the Chinese."

Many of my works are symbolic, yet simple."


Martin Willitts, Jr is a poet, storyteller, and
visual artist working with paper. His fourth
chapbook "Falling In and Out of Love" is
available from Pudding House Publications
(2005) and his on-line chapbook about peace
"Farewell-the journey now begins" is
available on www.langaugeandculture.net
(2006). His current publications include
Pebble Lake Review, Confluence (anthology),
Octavo, Rattle, MindFire Renewed, FireWeed,
Hurricane Blues (anthology) and others. His
paper cut-out artwork using Victorian and
Chinese hua yang styles has been on exhibit
in small museums. He has won many national
storytelling contests and was invited to
Denmark to tell many of the Hans Christian
Andersen stories.