You Make Me Feel So Real

Karakuri
The builders uncovered a mound of something that looked like bones, but with an old man and some old books, we pieced it all together. At the time before the invaders, the leader's engineers devised the most extraordinary type of automata. The secret was every once in a while they would do something you didn't expect: Fling the tea in your face, totter off to serve someone else, you know, show a little spirit. Not always something dramatic, no, sometimes they'd laugh behind their hands, cry quietly, whisper for you to please stay. You just never knew; that was the trick of it. The priests said the automata had demons inside them, but who listens to the priests when times are good? Everyone of style had to have one. As always, elegance tends to extremes, and it became the fashion to push their limits, give conflicting orders, that sort of thing. They'd watch them appear to go mad, repeating a movement or a word over and over until a spring burst. Of course there are always those who can't tolerate capriciousness in the first place, and these would take even such an expensive toy and smash it to bits after too much wine. When the invaders came, it put a stop to all that. We needed fighting puppets then.

Opted for prose poem today. Prompt was a twofer Tuesday, "matter and anti-matter."

Junot Diaz called the book by today's judge, Eduardo Corral, "wise and immense." Who could argue with that?