The Ace of Second Sight (An Allegory)

1

A trickster  a charlatan   a twisted harlequin
       a counterfeit medium   a genuine fake
a make-believe seer   a self-styled psychic
       an infallible master of oracular mistakes

he was   above all else blessed
with the grandest of gainful talents

with a gift   for commanding hefty fees
for feats of epic prophetic fraud
from his god-like lips
to the spellbound ears of his fierce devotees.


Risibly-christened  'The Wizard of Ozmosis'
his every prognosis was a swing and a miss
              his every forecast fell flat on its face
— not only had he never rounded home
but stats had shown  he'd never got on base

       not even with a walk   and for all the talk
              of his knack for sounding clever
       his record  — unblemished by success —
                            stood at 0fer-how-many-ever.


It was all the more wondrous then
that thanks to his fawning fans
believing beliefs  were superior to material facts

the longer his predictions kept whistling
their choo-choo way down a dead-wrong track
the more obvious it was  he led a charmed life

as his tribe of groupies grew
even keener in circling
the wagons of faith that proclaimed he was right.


2

Who'd there be  to possibly follow
phony prophets in all their falseness;
       who'd fall  for their appallingly hollow
       mind-boggling hornswoggling nonsense

       without the steadfast suppression
                            of clear-eyed dispassion;
              without the stark self-deception
                            only blind faith can fashion?


Who'd pay the faintest attention
to their utterly fatuous babble
                     absent suckers to suck along?

Who'd there be left to get taken
       by their blatant shams
       their brazen scams  their third-rate cons?

This article was posted on Sunday, October 2nd, 2022 at 8:03am and is filed under Poetry.