Moving Statue

1 Hades' sweaty hands
2 Grip my body tightly,
3 An angry serpent choking its prey.
4 With rough fingers he creates, forcing me to move.
5 With rough fingers he moves, forcing me to create.
6 With rough fingers he envelops me,
7 A moving statue of his imagination.
8 He'll take every part of me.
9 Starting with my feet, he'll turn me into a mop,
10 To wipe up his mistakes and clean up his sins.
11 He'll move up to my head
12 Where he'll brutally crush me, time and time again,
13 Just to produce more of his false truths.
14 I am branded by the markings on my body
15 Which continually remind me I'll never be his first
16 Only his #2
17 But this is my legacy, as was the legacy of my ancestors
18 A legacy as old as time itself
19 Thou hast manipulated this legacy from olden days,
20 And forevermore this legacy shall continue.
21 It is the eternal fate
22 Of the powerless pencil.

Line 1 is a mythical allusion referencing the Greek god Hades of the underworld. Alluding to Hades gives the impression that these hands holding the pencil are unnaturally hot or hellish in some way.

Lines 2-3 are a metaphor, comparing the sweaty hands to an angry serpent that forcefully chokes his pray. Utilizing this metaphor gives an accurate idea of how tightly this pencil is being gripped, thus contributing to the mee-like tone.

Lines 4-5 are an antimetabole, a reverse order of the same repetitive words. This draws attention to how helpless the pencil really is when it is being used to "create", in additon to drawing attention to the similarities of the pencil's actions and the fingers' actions.

Lines 4-6 are anaphora, a repetition of the phrase “With rough fingers” at the beginning of multiple sentences. Using anaphora emphasizes the fact that the rough fingers controlling the pencil manipulate it to do multiple things.

Line 7 is an oxymoron, since “moving” and “statue” are contradictory terms. This phrase makes you stop and think for a second as to how something rigid and firm can be “moving” in any sense.

Line 13 is another oxymoron, seeing as “false truths” directly contradicts itself. The idea of these false truths is a side reference to the idea that not everything one writes is completely pure or genuine.

Line 18 is a hyperbole, an over-exaggeration that is effectively used in this poem to emphasize how old the legacy of the pencil really is.

Line 19 uses archaic diction (old-fashioned and outdated language) to lend credibility to the fact that the poem references “olden days” in which language such as “thou hast” might actually have been used.

The entire poem is a personification of the pencil. Using words like “my feet”, “my head”, “brutally crush me”, and “markings on my body” give the impression that the pencil has humanlike characteristics and feelings, which gives the reader a different perspective on an ordinary practice.