Magicians and Ghosts

Magicians and Ghosts

Poof! the smoke clears between us,
but I didn’t turn back into a frog,
and you didn’t turn into an onion,
because it wasn’t an illusion
and there was never any
spell to be broken.

• • •

You enchantress,
you make me
disappear.

– Now you see me

• • •

So easy, isn’t it?

to just turn somebody
into a poem
and sell them

• • •

My tarot only tells me about you.
I think these cards are
broken or detuned,
or part of you
is trapped inside them,
making my spreads
reflect your mood.

• • •

As if
trancelike
I had mustered
the last hurrah of a memory,
I can barely recall
what it was like
to be someone else—
yours.

• • •

a yb denethgilnE Enlightened by a
I taht egdelwonk knowledge that I
,wonk ot tey evah have yet to know,
gnileef a yb kcurts struck by a feeling
,tlef yldrah evah I I have hardly felt,
htiw gnilbmert trembling with
ton erad I sdrow words I dare not
;yas say;

yb nekorb broken by
drah os ssentfos a a softness so hard
yletelpmoc m’I I’m completely
.derettahs shattered.

• • •

Your smallness is so
gigantic in size that it
constantly dwarfs me.

– haiku

• • •

Lightning trapped inside a bottle—
a lightbulb floats over my head,
burnt at both ends but never dimming;
never staying lit—
not a halo—no neon script
begging us to get a room;
trying to recapture magic
that we let go too soon.

– staycation

• • •

YIKES!—
I’m shocked,
and I realize
the lightning never left the bottle.

• • •

I can’t tell—
is my bed a chariot
on which I ride into dreams
or
a landing pad
on which I crash into reality?

• • •

Every day, I kill myself

like
the dragon who wakes up daily
to chase his tail across the sky and,
bite by bite, devours the light
from the horizon as he drags the sun
behind him like a paper lamp.
Darkness runs scatterbrained
from this battle
that consumes all my days,
and still
I light the world
in my unraveling.

• • •

An avenue of trees,
dotted octagonal with red signs:
a maple switches lanes
blinkerless
while an oak groans
to a rolling stop.

• • •

I feel like a
plaza—

scattering childrens’
voices

and candy shop
door chimes

‘cross cobblestone and facades—

so full of other people’s hopes.

• • •

Oh no; there’s no fooling me—
this is no type of city.
It’s a graveyard
dressed up for Halloween.

– Camden NJ, October 31st

• • •

I let you carve out a warren in my chest.

We could have chosen to burrow,
digging chambers and caverns,
but now
nothing wanders those tunnels
but the ghost of my heartbeat,
kicking around,
blind—
searching.

Everybody went home.
The doorways are boarded up,
and no whiskers peek
through slanted blinds.

I begged you
to build a place to raise your litter
with the bricks that I wrought
from my ribcage.

Now I’m as empty
as a quarry with no granite.

– For bunny

• • •

When I
close my eyes and
forget the earth,
I bet I’ll always
still remember you.

• • •

Every moment you’re not saying
yes, I’m hearing “no”:
it’s the words that you don’t say
that frighten me the most.
Every moment you’re not saying
stop, I’m hearing “go”;
I read between your lines
to find demise outlined by ghosts.

– Lisa Simpson

• • •

Your scent on my pillow is
a friendly ghost,
and he floats
between sour sweat
and the smell of sleeping alone.

– Casper

• • •

Regret is a stale beer,
and I’ve got the ghost of a whole keg
haunting my lips.

– Emma, I’m sorry

• • •

The past is a phantom;
the future, a siren.
Tomorrow keeps calling,
and moments keep dying;
the present arises between.

• • •

This girl in the bookstore
is trapped in her head.
Occasionally, genie-like,
she mouths the ghost of a word,
and I wonder:
if I rubbed her face
like a tarnished lamp,
would her story billow from her mouth?

– I dream of genie

• • •

I wish that Nanny’s cats
had stolen some baby’s breath
to breathe back in her mouth
as they circle ‘round her bed,

for once she bathed her children
and kept the cats away,
but now the cats are circling
and her daughter helps her bathe.

– In memoriam Ginny Scioli