i keep seeing a ghost in the corner of my eye.
it sits on a box just outside my door, looking vacantly, vaguely in my direction. it's hard for me not to glance back.
it's sitting on a box of old clothes.
i cleaned my closet this morning, as well as my desk and floor.
but while i threw out the dust and old tissues, the clothes remain, in the box, outside my door, being used as a chair for the ghost. it's still there.
i just reread and edited all that i've written so far. still there.
it doesn't knock, or pace, or threaten, or cage. it just stares. and yet its gaze feels like it is doing all of the things i mentioned, and a little more.
why are all my poems about death? perhaps all these ghosts that pass by my house beg me to tell their story. perhaps i am an ouija board, with a laptop. perhaps i'm a dream-catcher, looking for some place to write down all these nightmares i catch. perhaps i'm just dumb and spiritual. ghost's still sitting on that box of old clothes. it's glanced away.

the feeble flesh journey is short
it cannot last forever
and the spirit groans prayers
a captive longing for freedom
and freedom is eternity
and eternity is love
and love is offered to everyone
all along the road of dust.

I've lost another dear friend,
Another kindred spirit,
To the culling of this worsening
****** epidemic.

No more new poems
Waiting in my inbox.
No more just checking in.
No more redemption.

Just another empty hole
Pierced through our lives
Taken by the tip
Of a needle.

My  next  door  neighbor
as  just  died.
I  knew  he  was  dying.
But  it  still  came  as  a  big  shock.
I  was  just  thinking.
Life  is  so  fragile.
You  can  be  snuffed  out
at  any  given  moment.
R.I.P.  Norman.

Keith  Wilson.  Windermere.  UK.  2016

You park your lard *** **** on the skin of a cow and call it your new leather settee,
strap your feet into hide worked boots and stride across the Earth, all at the height of fabulous fashion.
Slap another slab of flesh on the barbecue and call it steak
(rare please) right next to the rack of ribs sizzling,
another brimming mooing cattle truck pulls into the abattoir,
and they say all the farts,of all the cattle, we keep eating, is destroying the climate all by themselves, but you wont find that information on the menu in a fast food shop serving burgers by the millions, or the main discussion at a barbecue, because lets face it, the meat in front of your nose has done all its farting, and its far too late to help save the World by some form of self-denial.

Lost in narcotic prescriptions
all your chemistry
now an elixir tweaked
in the lab where hairless blind rats
are fed the drugs in your bathroom cabinet
caged to Mankinds search for immortality
sometimes you give them a cigarette and a tab of LSD
but mostly you watch them die and sell the poisoned outcome
to a national pest control conglomerate.

the bottle of Bourbon empty of fire
the young woman danced within a Hula-Hoop
another train went passed
someone was blowing red bubbles out their mouth
want me to fill her up asked the bartender a thousand times
the young man fell in love with the Hula-Hoop dancer
the conductor asked for tickets
while the dying red bubble blower gave up the ghost and died dead as a Dodo as everyone else complained, "the trains are always late".

an Oyster Catcher upturned a shell with its bright orange bill
and I tumbled out to change the World
nothing was off limits the serpent said
so I tried everything and suddenly I was naked
so I hid with Eve, the first woman.
Who told you, you were naked? asked God.

First the ocean spat us out
so we polluted it
then the jungle
so we chopped it down
and because we had not wings
we decided to **** the sky.

Brought home in a coffin.
The wooden womb.
Back home to sleep forever,
interred in the dust.

sometimes you are ready for death
even when that experience is not even close
but then again there are so many sudden deaths
it pays to be ready to go on that final journey
and maybe its not so much being ready for death
more ready and willing to leave everything behind.