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23
The magician who guides the sparkling glass spheres through the air might be performing a miracle – the way they seem to float above his palms. Sometimes not knowing is enough.
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31 comments:
I caught the bottle as it as it bounced on the cold pavement, it seemed miraculously intact. An hour later the base fell out, red wine drenched our smiling hostess.
Labyrinths have always guarded the dead in a path of solitude and contemplation. My husband starved to death in one when panic over-rode logic. I regained the quiet I’d lost.
Sorry! -
I caught the bottle of wine as it bounced from the cold pavement, it seemed miraculously intact. An hour later the base fell out, red wine drenched our smiling hostess.
In each glass sphere was the flame of life. Dragon's souls; fragile things. The magician carried his, after the show, in a cotton Co-op reusable shopping bag. They were safe.
The magician who guides the sparkling glass spheres through the air might be performing a miracle – the way they seem to float above his palms. Sometimes not knowing is enough.
But when I was a boy I was once hauled out of a magic show by my Father for shouting at the stage.
“You’re not MAGIC!!” I yelled.
I was seven years old.
The audience turned and stared at me. I said it again, “That’s not magic and you’re not magic!”
The audience laughed, but my Father was not amused. He took my hand and pulled me out with him into the foyer and gave me a stern talking to.
“Don’t ruin it for other people,” he said.
“But I could see something holding the bubbles. I saw it. It’s not magic, it’s something else.” I whined.
I think that magic show was the template for the rest of my life. People’s need to believe in the unbelievable, the myth, the fairytale has always irritated me.
At school I was forever being beaten by the nuns who taught me, for questioning the unquestionable in their eyes. I didn’t have a name for what I was yet, but looking back, being a young Atheist in a Catholic School was setting me up for a miserable childhood. Arguments and questions were beaten out of me.
Only Grandad understood. He was baiting nuns well before I was born.
“People need to believe. They’ve got nothing else. But as soon as someone starts asking questions, people get nervous.”
That’s why it seemed so utterly ridiculous to me that the day I started to believe in something would be the day I sat with my Grandad as he slipped into death.
“I was wrong, Son, oh my God, I was wrong”, he murmured, eyes wide.
God the Magician, the Maker, UNMaker,
looks through His crystal glass,
Doing and Undoing, His routine rhythm,
We see miracles , mirages,
Yet, think devious,
Interpret more, Misinterpret
more and more.
There’s a magic box kept under our television. Click after click I can summon up different worlds, a hundred different channels of life, each restrained in the one glass prison.
It was a miracle
how he unbuttoned
stars, this close
with the night drawing
darker blue, the sky
unfolding secrets,
spinning a web
of scented sandalwood
like a skilled glassblower.
echulme@hotmail.com
His flies are undone, but everyone's staring so he can't do them up. What if they notice? So long as they keep watching his close-up magic, he'll be all right.
Dressed in pink sparkles, I heard him whisper magic words, and waited for the white rabbits.
Instead he shut me in a box and sliced me in two every night.
The magician’s assistant was worried. After so many times of being cut in half, she felt like Humpty Dumpty. What if, this time, she was not put back together again?
Jamieson Wolf
jamiesonwolf@gmail.com
The audience sat spellbound in the presence of a much publicised miracle worker. They had watched in awe as the glamorous young woman stepped into the box and settled down before the lid was replaced. As the magician sawed through the box, blood apparently seeped from the body inside. Breathless with anticipation, they waited. Accompanied by a roll of drums, from the mysterious depth of nowhere, the victim reappeared, smiling and obviously unharmed. Resurrected? Only the keenest and sceptical of observers might have noticed the slight changes to her person, such as hair colour and height. In response to the enthusiastic clapping and cheering, the magician bowed his acknowledgement. Twenty minutes later, after the audience had dispersed, a coffin might have been seen arriving unobtrusively at the back entrance to the theatre.
His next trick, removing his hat, withdrawing from it a live rabbit, fell comparatively flat; this could easily have been remedied by pumping a little more air into the creature before executing the miracle.
The exceptional number of plainclothes policemen among the audience at his next venue, mingled unobserved. The pièce de résistance billed for the second half was awaited eagerly. It is doubtful whether the six burly men rising inconspicuously during the interval, would have been noticed as they made for the back entrance of the hall.
The curtain dropped as the resurrected victim entered after the miracle had been performed; her hair meanwhile having been trimmed, her make-up surprisingly fresh.
Ambulance and police vans arrived simultaneously and carried out their respective jobs, the miracle worker being bundled into the latter, his hand seemingly linked closely to an old friend. The Headlines the following morning “Woman Sawn in Half”, while hinting vaguely of the previous night’s disturbed performance, suggested that a police statement would be issued later.
By allowing belief, hope and imagination to dominate we create all the magic we need to make the air bearable, breathable and alive. And that’s what brings about miracles.
Not knowing is the only way we can proceed. Not knowing where he lives or works, just darkness from the street and the glint of his glass like a star.
I pretended they were glass when I blew them, wanting them to last longer than a blop.
So I hung them on my unpierced earlobes and listened to them tinkle.
I see him ambling down the street, the man who broke my heart. Memories cast their spell. I freeze. “Cunt-twat-arsehole,” says my friend. I laugh. Her abracadabra sets me free.
C Taylor
CalistroWriter@googlemail.com
Presumption was a well stuffed cushion ever ready to break her fall. And she regularly fell, from hopeless pedestals, always landing with a whumpf and a flurry of unhurried feathers.
The wizard sneered as he set the sparkling glass sphere on the shelf amongst the others. Inside each one was a dream, quietly stolen, forever trapped, never to come true.
However, as the plane plummets towards the ground, pilot and co-pilot incapacitated, it pays to know. So when the tannoy asks “can anyone fly a plane?” you can step forward.
redjim99
jimbarron@walkauvergne.co.uk
Sometimes I wish I could wave a magic wand, cast a spell to dispel their hurt and confusion. But I can't. All I can do is be there for them.
He sits. His shoulders are hunched, the fat on his hips hanging over the top of his jeans' waistband. There's a smell. It's a mixture of spicy tortilla chips, salsa and sour cream dips and chocolates. But then it depends on the time of day. Sometimes, its hair gel and deodorant, sometimes stale sweat and flatulence. It depends on who he's seeing. As he moves the elbow supporting the side of his head, a dented Coke tin rattles against another and falls over. Brown bubbles dribble onto the cherry wood desk. The desk is indestructible, impervious to the nervous rapping of a twisted ruler. It has some kind of finish on it so that when leads from headphones are slung in anger across its surface, they glide, despite the dust that his mother can never uncover long enough to remove.
His dressing gown is always warm to the touch, even when it has been on the floor next to his wet towel. It's the one thing bought for him that he still wears. He really should have two so that he can rotate but his mother suspects that he likes the dirtiness of it clinging to his newly-showered body absorbing the bodily smells. His dressing gown says 'This is Me' in a way that he is unable to do. You can hang it up, try leaving on the floor, even wash it occasionally but it will resume its original state. Without argument. With confidence. Arrogance even? Maybe.
His mother wonders if talking to his dressing gown is strange. She sits on the edge of his bed, unmade for months now and draws it up to her nostrils. She can almost imagine that he's still here. But not quite. She's glad it can't talk back. Now that would be magic.
Gerry said
'Choose a card and keep it,' my father said. He looked through the pack quickly, counting numbers in his head; a second flick - to check
the suit. It never failed.
Gerry said
I'm practising for Christmas. If nobody sees the
cards are grouped in tens; if nobody insists on
shuffling; if they don't notice the court cards
are missing - they'll be impressed.
Waking up to a fresh, sunny day
A glass of good wine
A taste of dark chocolate
Slow dance in a tight embrace
A gaze, a kiss
It’s all magic
As a lad Gideon fantasised about becoming our Prime Minister. Then he discovered the allure of crystals, the power of black magic, and the joy of applause from a crowd.
Martin
Breaking the spell
Nobody saw how you
drew back
a black velvet curtain,
your tongue, fizzing
with conversation,
finally unlocking mine,
words already guessed
materialising
like bubbles from thin air.
Father never pulled rabbits from a hat,
Nor coins from an ear. He just flicked
The blanket, covered up
The curled up girl that was me,
Cold and fast asleep.
She lies awake each night listening for a key in the latch; jumps each time the phone rings, prays, counts to three…Sometimes not knowing is the worst thing imaginable.
My mom the magician; she regularly pulls off dinner parties for twenty without a hitch. Given that, I wonder why she couldn’t keep me from knowing I wasn’t her favorite.
"It is all an illusion,” says the young man holding the shattered glass in his hand. Who ever he is, monk, magician, snake oil salesman, he has opened the door.
Eternally revolving
in crystalline space
the spheres produce
celestial harmonies.
Puny Man on a blue planet
hurtling through the void
may, when the wind changes,
think he is hearing things.
freya_scott@yahoo.com
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