Magicians do seem to love their fancy dress
– flowing robes and funny hats and amulets like a rap star’s bling.
I’ve got ceremonial attire too.
A bulky jacket with frayed sleeves, old blue jeans almost faded to white,
mud-streaked sneakers with the soles rubbed thin.
People don’t see you when they think you’re a bum.
Their eyes instinctively slide off you, avoid your gaze.
They lower their heads and walk a little faster
lest your misfortune prove contagious or you act crazy towards them.
You can slip anywhere, do anything.
Mumble prayers aloud, make weird hand gestures,
arrange a magpie’s nest of colorful offerings
under a nymph-swollen tree,
stand at a crossroads staring vacantly into space for twenty minutes,
lost in trance.
When you are invisible and on the margins
you have absolute freedom
because no one cares about you.
Magic thrives in alterity.
I stand at the place where three roads meet,
with three choices open to me.
I can go to the mountain
and revel with fauns and oreades.
I can journey to the heart of the city,
speak words of wonder to passing strangers
and soak up the night life.
Or I can keep going straight ahead to a dark and scary park
where dead clowns watch you from rusty swings
and sinister calliope music sounds from nowhere,
from everywhere.
I stopped and wrote this poem instead.
Says something about me, doesn’t it?
So to compensate I went and did all three.
Story of my life.
