The Illusionist

Entrance entrancement,
three shattersteps, a spin,
and a top-hat triple tip.
Home-run hit with a bat
of eyelash entropy;
The crowd already captiv.ated
by this phantasmal fantasy of a man.

This self-titled illusionist of intents
calls to stage the fairest woman in the crowd,
stands before her deliberately delving
through the theory of her eyes.
Six heart beats pass and three are heard,
Four breaths as two and she smells the sand verbena
and sassafras that must somehow cultivate
his lungs.

He whispers gracefully in Gaelic;
and she says that
she loves him too.

Minus her fiance, the crowd
is full of enthralled & envious men
who see this power
for exactly what it is not.

He sighs.

He has her now,
in such a way that to break eye contact
would also break her heart.

He could have her
in many other ways as well
but releases and returns her
to the illusions
not of his doing.

The show finishes and he,
as always, takes no credit for the illusions.
He merely draws attention to those which were
already existent.

The illusion is the words that the woman
so comfortably says to him
every time he says in another tongue
that he cannot love anyone
who loves him without bothering to see
what and who
he truly is.





At home he writes a poem
to the woman he has not
yet found.

He falls asleep hoping that
soul-mates are merely elusive


and not illusive.