The unmagic, we got

Humanity isn’t magical
except that artifice
is natural
to us.

That alone
is a flipping world
changer.

You think I think humanity
is magical? As in, you believe
I hold more belief in that
from my side than is truly
warranted? Well, OK. 

Let's dice! Let's define a term
or seven. Which kind do you mean?
Sympathetic magic? Invocation
or summoning? Binding by word
of enchantment, compelling
the named one to serve?
Conjuration? Transmutation?
Abjuration? Divination?
Sorcery?

Sorry. Not it! Not me. Not buying
it
in the least. Oh, okay if you want 
to pull a cheat code God mode 
on us, why not. 
Maybe if there is one
true all-powerful all-knowing
all-sensing God, sure!

Miracle
seems to be
about what you'd expect
from a big scary alien-seeming being,
like that. Yet surely if so, then miracles
beyond life itself would be superfluous!

Overdoing it? 
What would they be for? 
Whose need or purpose 
might so finitely be served
or secured? As if by magic! 

Haha, come on. And oh, a touch
predictable, too, wouldn't it be?

Prestidigitation, now. Card tricks!
Optical illusions, mirrors and smoke!
Bewitchingly-clad and charming,
typically nubile assistants? 

That's how they get cha, for sure.
Hypnosis? No compulsion there,
not really: only for the willing,
who'd trust their hypnotist almost
as much as their serious, paid up
therapist, and probably only then
because of all the spectators and 
shit. Some of them probably friends, 
more or less dear. Work pals, school 
mates. The whole thing captured 
on so many cameras these days, 
it's hard not to feel safe when 
you're a closet exhibitionist 
anyway. Safer by far than 
an office visit, surely? 

So, "good show!" as
the classically-trained
traditionally posh English
stage magicians are so wont
to congratulate each other 
on a successful gag, or turn, 
or twist. Prestige! 

Surely.
The magician then might boom
a loud shocking call, as their arm
goes up the other way. Abra kadabra,
presto: formal wear begone?

Naturally, titillation is one hell
of a drug, especially at those
lowest rungs of society most
desperately in need of distraction,
so much that they'll pay if the show
is reputed to be showy and scandalous
enough. Or impossible to figure out,
afterwards? Those two: ignorance 
called bliss, and arrogance confounded, 
account for nearly all the gate receipts.

But--and it's a pretty, well-formed
butt, typically shown off as single
to the paying punters!--we all know 
at the end of the night, precious little 
has changed except money: poof! 

Changing hands. Smart, really 
for the assistant if they are single.
If he or she is, they'd stand a much
better chance of coming up from this
act alive and thriving. One of the bottom
-most bottomless and all too often 
topless rungs in the base and changeless

real business of show, don't tell
us the secret behind 
the trick,
see? It's

for fun.
It's academic,
any way you know.
Academic rivalries are
always the bitterest, precisely
because there's nothing really
there, there. Nothing that all we
in-the-know didn't know,
once the costumes
are all doffed, tossed,
folded, put away
to be cleaned at the
business end of the day 
and it hardly takes

magic.
Cold readings, sure. 
Audience plants? 
Bien sur.

De rigueur. Magic? 

Hell. 

I suppose you'd be waving 
your Harry Potter wand around
next, kicking up the kick stand 
on your flying broom and damning

me 

as a mud
blood

of something
huh? 

A kill joy, no
Sorry to frustrate.  
I love all that mystique
and classical stagecraft.
Considering what we'll do
in the ordinary course of our
combined and swelling nature,
which is to grind each other under,
mercilously for fun and profit,
change the course of mighty rivers,
seize bent steel in our bare hands, go
snooping in the guise of mild-mannered
reporters, supremely gifted at journalistic
ethics, way more tricks up the professional
sleeves in such higher-stakes jobs. I think

magic makes a pretty poor excuse
for what built the pyramids.
From nothing at all! From sand 
and waste stone, just sitting there 
piling underground, waiting to become 
some "god king" tomb for the ages, right? 

Right after all.

We've only had these same hard
soft materials to hand down
all the ages and decades. 
Is it any wonder the ancients 
could do more with an inclined 
plane and a few tons of logs 
plus slave labor running about
putting their backs and combined
ingenuity to it for their overlords
and overseers than anyone 

today,
comfortably ensconced 
in modern education 
privilege and with 
all the data we've got 
pinging and vanishing 
ceaselessly through us
and around our towns
like sparks from a wand, 
always at our fingertips?
We're each and every one
of us a barely controlled
chemical electromagnetic
thermonuclear biologically
tuned reaction on coke,
Coke, meth, speed, 'roids
or various other "magic
bullet" hormone supplements
and substitutes. We're killing
us by the yard and pounding
down upon us all, solid and
thickly viscous as we are!

As we wish we were, as
we seem? 

Look. 

See. 

It wasn't some dream. 

Hey poof it's back! 

The magic.
All it ever was 
was a stage we
recurrently go
through to feel
wonder and delight, 
over with horror and hate
cloven through and collapsing 

for one moment, which, 
okay, we'll rightly prize
and falsely call 

magical. 

Forever, that is 
until we forget
distracted by the transformative moon 

or the immaculate starlight 

above. 

So below we are, all of it. 

It's no wonder at all 
we think everything 
but our own mastery 
must be some

kind 
of a
confidence

trick.