Magic
Imagine for a second that the world you live in is magic.
Not your hocus-pocus, wave-your-wand-magic,
but magic like the coffee tables you sit at beat
with the hearts of the trees they were made from.
That the coffee and beer in your mouths
is feeding you life straight off the tongues
of the plants they were made from.
That every heart beating in this room
is beating in time to every heart in this room
and this poem.
Some of you will go home with some of you tonight
and some of you will go home to empty rooms
that some of you will wish you had gone home to:
go home to them.
Your empty rooms and the rooms you fill
always have at least one poem in them.
There is a poem in the pretty girl eyes in the front row
and there is a poem in the old man's cigarette on the porch
and there is a poem in the coffee girl's hands.
There is a poem in your hands, if you'll look for it
Imagine for a second that the world you live in is magic, because it is.
Because when you go home to your empty rooms
or to the rooms you fill you each take some of each of you with you,
if you want it.
If you want it,
you can take some of the pretty girl's poem
and you can take some of the old man's poem
and you can take some of the coffee girl's poem
and you can take some of mine.
Tonight, when I go home, my room will be empty,
and I will fill it with your poems.
I will fill it with the life the beer and coffee have fed you.
I will fill it with the heartbeats the tables you sit at
have beat against your hands.
I will fill it with the kisses that some of you will give to some of you
and I will fill it with the kisses that some of you
will wish you had been kissed with.
There is a poem shaking the air your ears are listening to.
Listen to it. Go home and look into eyes you've never looked into.
Hold a hand you've never held.
Touch flesh you've never been touched by.
Open your mouths and fill yourselves up
with every poem in every person you encounter tonight.
I'll do the same.
The world you live in?
It's magic.
-Gabriel Gadfly
tantan