Following Bliss

The downtown wizards
of modern magic
are up early — rinsing yesterday’s
sulfur from their mouths,
dressing their lithe frames
in alright costumes to follow
their bliss, striding
with great purpose into 
the tiny autonomy granted them
in their compartmentalized jobs — 

No!  These are not jobs,
they shout at me.
These are careers.

Wizardry, they insist,
is a career,
claiming superpowers
owned in fact
by their bosses.

Bosses beat wizards.
The downtown wizards know it. 
Hence defensiveness, hence
their longing for alright clothes
and purpose. How else to follow
bliss and climb
to a boss’s chair?

Some make it —
the ones
who stop rinsing away the sulfur.
Who may not glory in the taste
but who let it season
more or less 
everything

until even the wizards,
as strong as they are,
pale when they catch a whiff
and fall to their knees
before it,
sinking down,

following
the idea of  bliss
to its natural
destination.