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Song of the Sleepy Adept

I'm wiser than Masons of the Nth degree.
I've mastered every kind of yoga.
Through past and future I can clearly see—
I'll describe the stains on Caesar's toga.
I'd waltz with Mephisto across the lake,
I would, if I could just stay awake.

I've mastered much more forgotten lore
Than you. I'm miles beyond your magic
(Some have even dared to call me a bore).
At the midnight rite my fate is tragic:
The other wizards conjure ghosts till dawn.
I doze right off from the very first yawn.

I'm the real thing, no carnival fake—
I've sacrificed doves on the sacred lawn.
There isn't any curse that I can't make,
But I won't wait until the circle's drawn.
If only somehow I'd unearth a spell
As strong as coffee—Then I'd raise some hell.

by Mark J. Mitchell

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Mark J. Mitchell was born under the sign of Nun of the Above in the Year of the Bewildered. His checkered past has only allowed him to move diagonally along white squares. This has caused a permanent crick in his neck. The filmmaker and documentarian Joan Juster has had his back through all those years and promises to return it one day. Many of his poems contain secret messages and can be found in the anthologies Line Drives and Good Poems, American Places. The key to the code can be had for a nominal fee. His novel, The Magic War, reveals the meaning of his chapbook, Three Visitors, without even being asked.