The Bad Magician Cannot Gain A Purchase

At the bottom of the cliffs of sleep, lying on his back, gray in the dust of the talus, the Bad Magician opens what should have been his eyes and digital cameras fly out instead. Donald Duck goes to war and shoots all the pigeons. Keine fleigen, Der Uber Ducken!

Preserved in cancerous plastic, the Adventures of America press bloody legs in zip-lock prisons. Jesus eats through his birth-sac and is breeched upon the rocks. The digital cameras lengthen on necks of arcing metal; ahead the world is powdered and its hair is burned. The cliffs fall over, laughing, drunk, murderous. We are at the base of somebody else's dream.

A soldier motions America forward, and so we creep along like crabs. A sniper has been spotted exactly one hundred years ago, and now we hold the bullets in our teeth. When we view the past from the canyons, the water stops moving. It is thick like paste. A waiter offers rope. We swallow air by the glass. Later, with brandy on our lips, we sing about perfection. We offer a toast: Our cup is the moon, our night is winter. Rope is offered: we jump into the sea and drink like fish. Where are we going? ask the fish. The Bad Magician wonders why the silver that dances in the water can't be sold in stores.

Waves crash on top of the sky, and stars are surfing in electric waves. The Bad Magician cannot prove the simplest of equations. The center cannot hold, but so what?

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