New Orleans

Here, in these old streets,
ancient voodoo has been sold off as a souvenier,
mysteries manufactured for foreign money,
and magic, it seems,
has seeped out the banks of the levies,
lost like so many silver rings to the muddy Mississippi.

But wise eyes know how to look.


See;
magic cloaks itself in misdirection,
mistaken for superstition's sleight of hand.

It's still out there...
It's in the spanged cigarette and the estranged intellect,
it is spit through split lips,
it is roving, ranting obscene absurdities at the cracked-out dawn.

There is dank, swampy magic
swirling 'round swollen cigarette butts
soaked in last night's sewage,
in the vomit and the stale beer,
and seeping out the armpits of street musicians.

There's magic even on Bourbon,
where it fills tourist's pockets
as it shoulders past
shallow shadows and bottomless beers.

It's in the black eyes and the bloody fists.
It's the uprooted pavement and the foot that stumbles over it.

It's everywhere
waiting in plain sight
for someone
with an ounce of rum
and a few grains of gunpowder.