He shows them magic
sparks cascade around his head
his fingers, tendrils that channel
starlight, he tells stories and poems,
his confidence backlit
with the mild hysteria of someone
watching a clock run down
he watches their eyes gleam,
wonders what he will do
how long he will survive
when these little lights
go out
when the moment
has ebbed away
in the near-dark of five o clock
the applause
leached out of his blood
the insistent hour
come upon him.
They don’t make storage cells for this stuff
it comes and it goes like rainbows
you can’t freeze
these frames
they’re here and they’re gone
like POOF…magic
dust
in your hands
a lizard’s tail flicking, drying
he looks out into the evening
with that hollow light burning
all down the river
wonders if drowned people
are floating past
and he stands there in the twilight
in just his socks
for almost an hour
while the dark spreads down the hillside
and wraps itself around the streetlights
feeling something in his guts
that he never felt before,
not really, he wonders briefly
if it is illness, or just the tide
going out.
