I used to write songs to god
back when I did not know a lot
or think much about what I want
It was all a lie I told myself
to believe

The amazing grace
missed it’s mark
No one saved my soul,
often gone
It was all a lie
that everyone seemed to believe

I think it requires a type of hope
and an overwhelming need to cope,
which I never could
I believe in ghosts
and electricity;
unwinding and rewiring
Nothing good ever came from the shock

I used to pray for everyone -
anxiously and, often, overdone
The weight never softened,  
always buckling under the worry
Some never need to learn,
they just know its true

This bone-tired body is a battlefield
where I keep returning
to bury the same soldier,
over and over.

His face shifts like seasons—
familiar and foreign,
the line between my lines,
fading into fable,
floating into folklore.

He’s died here a hundred times,
and I survived every one.
But I keep coming back,
thinking I might unearth
something softer.

My hands tremble from holding too much—
soliloquies, symptoms, scapegoats,
saltshakers, semicolons, starry-eyed sighs.
My knees buckle under the weight
of a history I can’t rewrite.

No matter how many poems erupt
from my shell-shock,
how many mornings I crawl from trenches,
listening to the sound of birdsong—
I always return, ***** in hand.

He stares up from the dirt,
his mouth unmoving but full of accusations.
"You never let me go,"
he whispers without sound,
"and I’ll keep rising until you do.
Don’t you get it?
You buried yourself here too."

How many deaths does it take
to make a ghost let go?
I’m running out of shovels,
but never out of wishes.

Some wounds are wars,
and some wars never surrender.
If I stop digging, will the war finally end—
or will it bloom
in the silence I leave behind?

He is dead, and she

writes me from his mobile phone:


You don't have to cry.

She remembers
when the light
was filled
with silent ghosts.  
They would flicker in and out
in the cigarette smoke  
of the theater,  
each frame
an ashy wisp,
a burnt offering.
The story spooling out
in the air
was a familiar one.
The  sentiment
caught in her heart
and  made her cry.  
  
Years later,  
she went back,
after the smoke
was banned
and only the light
was permitted to filter.
The ghosts  
talked to her, now-
but it was no longer
a sacred thing.
There were profane words
and the noise hurt her ears.
In this night  light  
there were no  
familiar family faces.
Everything was clear,  
startling new and strange
and all the colors
too bright  for her eyes
to bear.
And it was then
she knew
she would die
in this nightmare dream.

Cold winter afternoon,
Heading to my friend’s,
Down to the woods,
Ghost hunting again.

Deep into the ravine,
Feeling strange,
Like being watched,
From away.

“Split up,”
“Farther that way?”
Alone I see it,
A beautiful woman in the creek.

I called out,
She looked at me,
Then faded.
A ghost,
I swear I saw.

As  Lisa falls asleep
She feels her soul leave her body
As it shoots to the moon
Alas she is alive
She is now on the moon
This happened 200 year ago
Long before the thought of astral projection
And to this day you see her
Face blend in the craters of the moon

The Ghost Writer

As I pick up my pen to begin to write these images
In my imagination I wrote this as if it was spoken
I’m hoping to learn something
let the words say something
That I can share for you to listen
Is it paranoia or premonition?
My instincts or intuition?
Now I’m leaving it all on paper
With rhythmic melodies and elegant Eliquis
I’m doing it all for the passion
Everything written in second hand
whether it's on purpose or happenstance
The words of my Ghost and its writer is all that stands

In a faraway place and faraway time
stood square a cabin rotted pine and bramble flue.
Once haven for old crones craven - their skins thin-skinned slivers of brine;
now nary a soot line marked a witches' brew.

In the dark, swirling silver stark and creatures would quiver
held over ***-stew thither, along hymns of damning chanted.
Waggled tongues with an evil glaze would slither,
cursing in eye, toe, and liver the bubbling broth decanted.

Oh a malkin giggled and a paddock piggled;
sniggled in a mirth-marked cauldron's rubble double bubble.
With a whoosh and a swish a bony finger had wiggled,
as papery skin withered the drubble swuddle brubble.

On those blackest of nights, when wolves would fear the moon,
howls held loomed, choked on down the throat of dusk.
Hatred uttered its sleepy breath, pitch-entombed
and justice marooned under a tar most brusque.

Shadows danced incantation
for an occultish creation, oh the devil's bidding be done!
Flamed carnation, neither here nor there god-fearing,
cackling a primrose coronation; the stirring spoon spun!

Death-catcher chimes hung close upon the entry;
a dust since turn of century marred bone;
witches’ wart-encrusted noses crinkled at gentry;
chenille voices sung with celerity a hellish praise: Divinum Occultum.

A little duende ran down the cauldron,
gloom chanting a chant come out with a hurl.
Burnt feet chasing away all ghosts ‘n goblins,
unfurling like whisper from the concoction:

Doom upon all the world.