Pinocchio's Pestilence

We are limited by 26 letters

and unwritten vocabularies:

Our words only fitting together in magician's boxes

used for the spurious slicing of bodies in half,

but they'd always trick us with rubber legs.

That's what we were given to work with:

RUBBER LEGS AND A PLEXIGLASS SAW!

But something within us shouted,

"GIVE THEM A SHOW!"

...and this is why they call poetry an illusion,

this is why I shake in front of crowds--

But the show must go on!

I'm pulling prose out of dwarfed Lincoln top hats,

habitually hoping that it's white and silent and will keep them warm at night:

Performing blindly with poetry's illusions!

...And this explains why I am scared,

But I can't tell you that,

Can I?

I'll say it through my virulent ventriloquist dummy,

So go ahead Pinocchio and tell them I'm scared!

...As long as my lips never move, the show can go on!

Even if it's built from tarots, it's still a house of cards!

We can still hide there until

we grow too large for ourselves!

...And this is why we must ring ourselves out in the evenings:

Those pesky squatter symbols need to get evicted daily

So they can know it's okay for them to return;

So that we can GIVE THEM A SHOW!

...Pinocchio, tell them I'm in love!

I can't seem to pull it out of my tumultuous top hat!

Tell them I'm in love Pinocchio!

Keep working for me,

and you'll keep your nose short.

Author's Note

unfinished