I am a magician.
I can do impossible things.
I can watch for an eternity
without blinking.
I can walk on water,
at great personal cost.
I can tell the truth,
even when friends plug their ears
so that all they hear me shout is
‘wolf, wolf.’
Sometimes I read too many abstractions
and the house fills with thunderheads.
You force me outside into the blue and green
and I remember that bad news needn’t eclipse.
—
Sometimes the street fills with smoke
and we usher friends, strangers in.
We draw the curtains and, maybe quietly,
pour the wine, play a game.
if you have been surprised
or disappointed
by cruelty happening
on purpose
there is nothing wrong with you
it means that you believe
another world is possible
and every time
you tell a friend you love their art
you help mom with the dishes
you wave back at little kids
that world claws itself closer into being.
You can never step in the same river twice.
We cannot go home but that doesn’t mean
we can’t see it, far downstream.
When this fever breaks
we will build a new home,
one of stone and brick and hands.
I walk through these dark woods
with my head in the clouds,
dreaming of home.
On time’s ocean across the universe
he sailed into the fabric of myth,
a deluge, escape across the sea
and the founding of a country.
Pillar of ash and pillar of smoke,
aurochs thundering under yoke,
turn
In another time, the mists parted
and he saw an unfinished pyramid
dismantled, the men walking backwards
and throwing the stones into holes.
Pillar of tar and pillar of steel,
driven backward by the wheel,
turn
He had planned on seeing glory
but when came down from the mountain
his face was wild and pale.
He said to those hollow men –
Turn the wheel of fortune that has
a hand at each wedge.
Grasp your prize and pull.
