Undaunted, the wheel turns. Change is the bootmaker finishing the coating on the sole. Taking the stumbling course across the rough streets.

Baby steps. Make the choice before it can be known, that’s what separates the master from the wannabe.

So employed fastidiously, the hammer and chisel, from the humble shop-front to the warring states. Too big to be ignored, too small to be governed. What else does fate have in store? The omnipresent monster lurches forwards – or will it stop short again? The humble beginning, its earnest entreaty is not fond of counsel, and it sits reproachful, at those who resist its gilded seat.

Embodying the first breath as if it were the last. This is unmistakable, as a dutiful undertaking, but arresting and distant as an immanent start, for all those who favour the bosom of simple ignorance. Perched between protruding twigs with simple nests to contain their verisimilitude, and sleeping only when reaffirming the things they know. If they can ever be trusted, as they are naïve dancers skating on thin ice, distracting us all from the cracks made with their showmanship.

The simulacrum, arrives. As in what it offers the distortion does help. It wrestles the foolish,  erstwhile copycats and vultures in tow; they fall for the simple vices, pleasant and presented easily. It takes little effort to stew in their own filth, as it comports with their running criteria.

They mistake the weights on their feet for the finest lesson, no stranger to their willful detention, plunging deep into their hubris. That will cost more than should be accounted for, and for which, the answer to the question of how remains. To take with honest appreciation the first instance of unknowing. It is to step aside at the end of the road and witness the perils of humiliation and confusion, of piecing together the way forth, even if unsure of the direction. To accept it, looming on the horizon, met with grateful ease. As if the gauntlet once laid down, becomes navigable, mentionable, as in a noted dream.

As once was witnessed before, now found again. The ever-present revolutions, denoting how and when the notches of enmity prolong, or how eternities become, evermore, when delighted through fractal insistence.

They are trying and that’s all they do.

Their brush with execution is to mismanage their death. They hang themselves through their own intransigence. Thus, another cautionary slam of the mallet, and purgatory’s waiting room spills over, leaving the underworld beset with a secondment.

As if that wasn’t the plan all along, passed between cloaked figures in the colonnade; changing shifts while the obtuse apprentice keeps on. The beat of the drum is the propaganda of progress. I’m invested in the fabric of all things but the strands are cut, and I refuse to see it. It’s as if William never took a shot to the eye and carried on, onwards. Beatification like the pale horse refusing to pause, as they forget the difference between the inert child and what resides within, they see the infant in all things.

Such is their prerogative. Staring at missing links in between soldering sutures. It’s not enough to be a half-machine, if you can’t put a dent on someone else’s future. They incubate that which they fail to register, and the impish thrall demonises the newborn. Never stood a chance in the encyclopaedic half-time show that denounces the aether.

That is the fading beauty of an optical treat. And given to the understatement, a failed estimation.

That when stepped out of the shadows, the light is blinding.

A bolt from the blue, and that cannot be true, can it? Hidden in plain sight, until the time has awoken. The forgery of the established painter falls prey to a miniscule supernova – the enigma undone, and the prophets have spoken. How was it there all along, and to that they cannot even surrender. The mawkish dawning would quickly expose their ailing fawning, so it is covered up behind the rafters. Forever after.

They design to rule a roost but preclude the aerial view. It’s as if the head honcho-dressed like a pauper, or the millionaire put themselves firmly up for review. Suddenly, but not all at once, the master is revealed, designated when the hubris claimed the student. Not that they even attended their lecture; too praised at their pulpits for examination, and they have no answer, not even a trace of revision. They dare not request assistance because it would splinter their image. It shatters the mirror and the artifice lingers. They glitch into defence and reinforce their resistance.

The arousing work lay in tatters, and all investments have perished. Burnt by a blackened sun, too far gone to replenish. They must keep on wandering through the gaps between fences, avoiding the spotlight, until they are gone.