A charlatan made bare

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original poetry and images
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by @d-pend

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Hazes seethe in dream,
distance—
in the instant of awakening
—implanted
along the puppet-seam.

Wires fine—
—they glint—
—I dance, moved by unseen
sleight of hand
of macrobes' script metallic.

Steel-sharp, my limbs flail
in glimmered convolutions.
Art-flint, in a heart's bent,
spark cosmo-rituals.

Planet-wise, I'm riverside,
at humanity's burst dam.

Thumbed codices of water, wretched
with the touch of decades, jostle,
grasp onto my cover's catch:
I turn, thesaurus of wind,
to
slip
past

Fell indexes of profession—
—and hue.
Funnels of finest failure
to utter essences:
pyres built by rue.

Eyes that tangle mine
with the flame of eloquence
divine unspoken—
only to unwind, erase
the knots of letters burned.

Ground down
by crowd's abrasion,
I am made scant by pumice
of all our truths withheld:
behind a magmic rictus—
vicissitude of alms.

O humble mendicant palm:
unfold, outstretch.
make me noble in transparency
and frail in dark designs.

O little one, made minor
by the monolith of earth,
to grasp nay, to be held—
to reach nay, but to search.

A vast reach of arms
cannot falter, yet fail.
By hours growing grey—
by finger-clasp, made pale.

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By Daniel Pendergraft,
written January 22nd and
edited February 9th 2020.
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First published
on STEEM blockchain.
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_{Images are digital composites
of free domain photographs.}

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Optional discussion questions:

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1) What significance do hands have in this piece?
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2) In the context of this piece, what is the meaning of prestidigitation?
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3) Who or what is the charlatan in this poem?

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