If you were to show me
the most amazing thing in the world,
it would change my life,
the drunken magician said,
as we stumbled through the streets of Budapest,
but...
Show me the most amazing thing the world
twice,
and the second time,
I would be primed to destroy it,
to pick it apart,
almost involuntarily,
with decades of experience
and the harsh knowledge of an old soul.
You never think that joy and excitement are finite,
but they are.
Life, he told me, just like magic,
is fundamentally a quest for novelty.
The longer you live, the harder it becomes
to find the magic in this world.
When you're old,
when nothing surprises you anymore,
life becomes a beautifully rehearsed shuffle
of moves you know,
moments you've lived,
tricks you've seen.
If you can't find any wonder anymore,
the only thing left to do
is take the wonder you do have
and pass it on, to everyone else.
Then, without prompting, he reached up into the night air
and plucked a coin from nothing.
He then dropped it on the ground, and plucked another,
and another, and another,
each with the smoothest of sleeveless movements,
until finally there was a pile upon the ground
and he had no more left.
The magician bowed,
and offered me the final coin.
I told him it was great.
The best Miser's Dream routine I'd seen.
His Goshman Pinch was phenomenal,
and that that one aquitment totally fooled me.
He shook his head,
thanked me, and we parted ways.
I found out a week later
that he shot himself
in the head
with a modified bullet-catch prop gun.
His note said
that he had performed the last new trick,
the one final bit of wonder,
that would one day astound us all.
YOU ARE READING
Poetic Universe
Poetry* Welcome to my Poetic* *Universe * Hush little baby You're almost dead You don't have a Pulse and your Pillow is red Your family hates You and your friends Let you bleed Sleep tight with a knife That's all you need
