These optical illusions
Create an optimal confusion
When eyes are a welcome intrusion
To the brain's inevitable conclusion

We stared into the mystic mirror
I witnessed everything I ever wanted in life
All you witnessed was just two people standing there
The transparency you cast upon me
Reminded me of how the plumes of **** smoke
Were never as thick as my problems
And as those clouds left my mouth and dispersed into the air
I saw your image
Preserved in briefness

It's a shame how my magician's mind
Summons smoke and mirrors
Nobody else believes me
But magic is the only way to explain you
The way you turned me invisible
Was spectacular
Your methods of sawing me in half
Certainly weren't natural
And your teleportation demonstration
Left me suspended in ice
So I guess I'm to Blaine
For the mirrors I erected
And the truth they reflected
Because now I'm lost
In what I refuse to call a funhouse
As I search frantically for some ancient tomb
That might reveal your brilliant incantations
Attempting to ignore the horrid revelation
That every spell I learned
Had been based in your arcane aura
And all the power I had gained
Had been based in your enchantment

I want a magician
Not an illusionist
So what does it mean when your illusions are so magical?

Static, memories
Emanating, separating  
The postcard- perfect
Still life speaks
From its storied past.
Invisible, to drift
Among  
The florid aphorisms,
Ending in
Deleterious debris,
Aftermath of
The inevitable.

Empty room, echo hollow
Tabula rasa -
Carpet clean, quite candid in it's
Return to callow.
Consciousness athirst,
Absorbing phenomena
Effervesce, inquisitive
Ideas foment,
Sealed inside a question.
The what -
Against the narrow
Scarcity,
And fatigue of should.

A tender malleable
Youth,
Betrayed, under
An assumed decorum -
Residue of truth,
Flattened emotion
Privations of a self
Unheard;
Misplaced affirmation,
Buried pathologies  
In architecture
Fear manifests symbolic.

Harboring apathy
The lunacy of pious
Pedigree,
Import contagion,
Fetters of benignity
Doubt and indecision  
Into ******
Cognizance,
Fallow spirits
Seep fumes of decay,
Credulity bleeds a human stain.

Social edifice, inoculated  
Heirs of neurosis;
Palpable, sensual pain
And transience, though
Tacit - remain,
Our haunted history,
The blind hyperbole,
Maudlin
Forbearance, this haven,
A portrait
Of immaculate condition,
Nurtured with precision
Under sterling pretense.

Provincial domicile -
House beautiful,
Savage irony -
Unseen treasure
Innocence unabridged,
Faces, tiny creations;
Compliant vessels
Wounded,  
While modernism murmurs  
Its promise.

Brave New World,
In a late model sedan,
Domestic ranch on a
Corner lot,
Suburban natives,
Silence means security.
The misunderstood
Speak louder -
Consumerism beneath    
Unvarnished ambition,
Never could
Repair the brokenness within...

© 2011 & 2018 W. S. Warner

endorphins flood my mind
bubbling up behind my eyes
in vivid blues, greens, and pinks,
setting every nerve on edge
solid pounding through my veins
pushing lava to the surface
lighting it on fire
heating the soft trails
your fingers leave on my skin.