We must be patient until the other senses tell us that deception resides in the resemblance to the true.
          —Augustine¹

To wait for fame before wanting to be loved,
a chorus of dust screaming in the footlights
unsettles itself as no one watches us
both soliloquy, dreaming of becoming
memorable for something other than just
one coin’s two halves being spent without foresight
by a lonely man underselling himself
in front of an audience left wondering

how he did it, how we must have opened up
without a second thought what no one else might
ever in their life invite strangers to watch,
to touch as it leaves this vault, my heart pumping
until it numbs to a complete stop this pulse
feeling suddenly incomplete and in sight
of what beating it believes it needs more of,
the emptying of seats by people running,

turned off, from this bleeding lyrical on what
must happen when magicians, confronted by
scepticism, give in to doubt, offer too much
explanation, with many words the one thing
worth obscuring ruining, saying they have
accomplished nothing greater than brave stage fright
while tricking voyeurs into paying for such
sights as one otherwise finds underwhelming,

“Loud in my art and quiet in my life” was
once the caveat of all who double lives
onto one bill, folding only after tough,
untransubstantiated things
we are, we settle the gross until dulled
into wanting to be more subtle, refined
by the crucible of some patient seraph’s
flaming lips to sacred names mouths of babes drink.

__________
¹Augustine of Hippo, “Resemblance and the senses”, [Dialogue] 12, Reason responding to Augustine, in “Book II” of Soliloquies: Augustine’s Inner Dialogue: Translation and Notes by Kim Paffenroth: Introduction by Boniface Ramsey: Edited by John E. Rotelle, O. S. A., published at Hyde Park, New York by New City Press in 2008; page 67.