on a clear day

here are now automatic pencils that look like pencils
In so much as the creators had originally thought to make them appear as machines
Then came the era of see-through
Plastics as a hollow body
With buttons placed ergonomically
Or at least as though the creators had put some thought into where those buttons for advancing graphite might be placed
I say graphite, but we all really still say "lead"
And maybe that is why
Eventually
Pencils are made to look like pencils
In the universal sense, that being the one where we all agree on what a pencil is
That being the one that exists in the cognitive mind and conscious
The creators, I assume, know about the super-conscious
It would be silly to think of them not knowing
We call Higgs boson the god particle
And search furiously
Nipping at our tails
Knowing all along that the super-conscious is where god was born
A gaggle of monkeys agreeing on what they see
In some mystical group hallucination
Where tree is tree
And apple is apple
Take one step down or forward in description
Like expanding pixel saturation and zooming in
We eventually all agree we are not looking at the same tree
Because we are not a village
It is not "the tree"
You know, the tree

But back to pencils
And why we want them to look like what they are
Not a solid pigment core inside a protective casing
But a yellow, hexagonal, quarter-inch stick, with a metal ferrule and reddish-pink rubber plug on one end and exposed wood and a black point at the other
It is interesting to note the Latin root being penicillus, a variation of penis, whereas "little tail" is the result; in French, pincel, or little paintbrush
It is also interesting that our pencil
The one in our head
Never had lead

Before you swear on your childhood self
Your super-conscious anonymity
Your brave little monkey
Before you gamble away all the precious galactic fears that give rise to beautiful chaos
The lead was in the paint;
That bright cheery yellow
Glossy and smooth
Teeth marks abound
That feeling of soft wood giving way
To young bony teeth
The nightmare of a one Ebenezer Wood
The tarnished lining on what is the epic dream of Grey Knotts
The mistake known as plumbago
It is not the dark you should be afraid of
Not the void or the void filler, the blackness, the shadow
It's the outside you shouldn't have been grasping so hard onto, into
It's the shell of things that led you astray
It's the mythical archetype and goblin of us all
It is the mask of our hero
Our favorite story of the only two we know
A stranger walks into town
Small town boy dies good
You were poisoned by the paint
--
8.17.12

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