Come On All You Ghosts


<>

I heard a little cough
in the room, and turned
but no one was there

except the flowers
Sarah bought me
and my death’s head

glow in the dark key chain
that lights up and moans
when I press the button

on top of its skull
and the ghost
I shyly name Aglow.

Are you there Aglow
I said in my mind,
reader, exactly the way

you just heard it
in yours about four
poem time units ago

unless you have already
put down the paper directly
after the mention

of poetry or ghosts.
Readers I am sorry
for some of you

this is not a novel.
Good-bye. Now it is just
us and the death’s head

and the flowers and the ghost
in San Francisco thinking
together by means

of the ancient transmission device.
I am sorry
but together we are

right now thinking
along by means
of an ancient mechanistic

system no one invented
involving super-microscopic
particles that somehow

(weird!) enter through
your eyes or ears
depending on where

you are right now
reading or listening.
To me it seems

like being together
one body made of light
clanging down through

a metal structure
for pleasure and edification.
Reader when I think of you

you are in a giant purple chair
in a Starbucks gradually leaking power
while Neil Young

eats a campfire then drinks
a glass of tears
on satellite radio.

Hello. I am 40.
I have lived in Maryland,
Amherst, San Francisco,

New York, Ljubljana,
Stonington (house
of the great ornate wooden frame

holding the mirror the dead
saw us in whenever
we walked past),

New Hampshire at the base
of the White Mountains
on clear blue days

full of dark blue jays
beyond emotion jaggedly piercing,
Minneapolis of which

I have spoken
earlier and quite enough,
Paris, and now

San Francisco again.
Reader, you are right now
in what for me is the future

experiencing something
you cannot
without this poem.

I myself am suspicious
and cruel. Sometimes
when I close my eyes

I hear a billion workers
in my skull
hammering nails from which

all the things I see
get hung. But poems
are not museums,

they are machines
made of words,
you pour as best

you can your attention
in and in you the poetic
state of mind is produced

said one of the many
French poets with whom
I feel I must agree.

Another I know
writes his poems on silver
paint in a mirror.

I feel like a president
raising his fist in the sun.

returned to the same desk,
the same grindstone, the same thoughts,
cyclical patterns of thought and action,
but which comes first?

the will slips, the cracks widen,
and it all floods in, easier to understand,
caught within the same ropes,
you spun from woes of a broken past,

and they were meant to help climb out,
but the grease that bounds the threads,
cannot be grasped by those unresolved,
to the reality they crave most,

and just how far have you gone for the sake of your "camaraderie," my friend?

their half-glow hearts and prejudiced minds could have swallowed you whole,

or abandoned you, wit be-******, and genius be-******, you
might have died a pauper—

I hear they’d **** a man much more guarded than you, they might string him up,

tie his broken body to a fencepost, leave him ******,

satisfy a tyranny under the watchful eye of a loving God,

trade a boy in Laramie for a jet-black brutal odium,

**** a kid and wonder what his mother did to steer him wrong—

but still you wrote of calamus and of holding hands and handsome lovers,

still you gave us songs to sing back to our lovers, gentle songs,

despite the shame and censorship they cursed you with, despite

the threat that everything could be undone, despite the scripture,

well I must say, dear Good Gray Poet, before I fold my hand,

thank you, Walt, for giving us what you never had.

I felt the ground beneath me,
There was nothing at all,
I had nothing,
To stop the fall.

I could hear the shrieks,
of ghosts in time past,
I wonder how long,
they will last,

I could feel the breath of a slimy creature behind,
a conjure casted cat ran through my mind,
I thought of death and how my clock winds,
but alas, death leaves my contract left unsigned,

I opened my eyes, bright sun up above,
Startled, I jolted up with a buzz, gave my body a shove,
flowers on the ground spelled out love,
heat on my face I had nothing to speak of,

I took a long walk to understand,
what I thought was in the masterplan,
I sunk my toes in the dirt to feel the land,
I realized the plan isn't about my lifespan

The progressive flow of time
can never, ever unwind
don't think towards infinity
and degrade your own trinity

The title of alive is but a mask
finding your power is your true task
I look back and I realize now
why my depression screamed so loud

I wasn't true to myself
I could think of nothing, and nothing else
To regain my insanity, my dignity
Grow my resolve towards infinity

Many nights I see you lay awake,
tormented by the mistakes of your past.
I see your thoughts
replaying it in your mind like a bad rerun you can't turn off
I can't take it anymore...
I can't take watching you inject that pain into your mind
over
        and
               over
                       again...
Don't you know there is rest for you on The Skull?
There is rest for every broken
                                                    sadden­ed
                                                                ­     weary soul.
All you have to do is move it to my side.
I can take it.
I paid for it.
It is done.
Now sleep, child.
Take rest
I'll keep watch.

Matthew 11:28-30
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light"