“Each forward step we take we leave some phantom of ourselves behind.”
― John Lancaster Spalding

A bit of phantom dreaming
A haunting phantom free
A dreary phantom morning
A toil of phantomy

A rock of phantom learning
A leaf of phantom tree
I find my phantom yearning
A phantom just for me

I walk this dismal dark and damp dungeon
  Long dark the phantom am i;
Strolling I now take icy breaths;
  Mystery lies within my realm;
Far faint foot echoes announce my impending doom
  I embark upon my midnight
Echoeing chamber room
  It's chains that puppeted victims that had
Screamed for their end and at last,
  I had giggled laughed and touched their quivering chest
And felt their fading warmth
  Then into oblivion casted they were by me

This dark stone its chilling floor
  Where rodents squeek and scurry about,
My only pets and friends I know

Suddenly I hear as HEAVY VOICES of my approaching DOOM
  POUNDING FISTS and swinging logs against my dungeon door and room

I curse the empending light by
Their torches casting beams
Bound from hell and its slithering horrid beam fingers
  Under my dungeon door

I curse my end by angered pounding fists
  Hell bound to see my end to be

What cursed blackened night just lies
  A distant short,
A breathless world my oblivian beckons me by hounds
  Of DOOM,
My parts be scattered h e l t e r  s k e l t e r
  My inners thrown upon old wooden beams above

Soon i will leave this loveless world i made,
  i foretell and kiss only an empty space goodbye,  
Waiting first ****** deep within my flesh to be

I don't know why but sometimes I feel as if I'm caught,
Caught between a rock and hard place,
Caught in a place where I can't escape from,
Yes there are people here but they can't hear me or see me,
I scream as loud as I can,
They just look right through me,
I try to touch them try to let them know I am here,
But my fingers just slide right through.

Am I stuck in a phantom zone?
Am I stuck in a place between the real world and death,
Why can i stop the pain that rushes through my vains,
While I'm in this place.

I'm stuck, I'm lost, I don't know what to do.
Some one anyone tell me your there make me belive I'm not stuck.

Etched on your palms
Were thousands of my love letters
Traced along your line of heart
was the secret language of my soul

In your hands I found
the warmth that embraced my cold ones
The tender silence you offered
when the world was too busy to listen

And now,
As pieces of you start to fade away
Your hands remain….
The phantom limbs that hold me fast still.

You're so broken you're on your knees
You're alive but not living
If I could I'd bring you back to life
And that's a promise and definitely a lie to be told

You are your own resurrection
I cannot help you at all
If you fall I will try to catch you
But how can I catch you, if you are only a phantom of what was?
You'd slip right through my fingers like grains of sand in an hour glass
Just like you did with my trust
It slipped right through your phantom fingers

How did I ever think you were real?
I should have known those whispered words were nothing but wasted air and time
I could have sung songs of whispered broken hearts instead of listening to the nothing that is you
So from now on I will sing of phantoms, phantoms like you
The ones that use souls up and tell lies and break people's trust
*I wish I knew just what you were from the start
But how could I when I was blind from seeing right through you from the heart?

Loving him is like an odd thing
What would this absurdity soon bring?
She loves and cares for someone hiding
He's like a phantom in the dark singing...

Fill your heart, fill it as full as you can.
Fill it with memories most warmly hued
and remember them well
in all their glorious, sweaty,
kindly brutal
minutiae.

Remember each drop,
each bite,
each individual dust
mote dancing
the still, hot, sunlit
February
Thursday.
Remember how different
places all have their own
unique elusive
smell and how
it is impossible to describe this to anyone
who has never lived
anywhere else.

Fill your heart with all those memories
of the best kind
of home grown hell.

Fill it until its tears are forced out.
Fill it against the long, cold dark of parking lost.
Fill it against mysterious hate.
Fill it against misery and mud and hard
frozen
bottle
glass
lies.

Fill it so full it can't ever sink far down.
Burden it with buoyant stories
and weigh it with
hypnotic winter flame.
These are the things of which
the cold terror to
victory apocalyptic will be born.
There are no second prizes here.

Fill it with the certainty of the worn places
where the chairs met
the table
each night.

Fill it with the truth of
the gnarled and sun-warm roots and
the indisputability of a Beetle motor accelerating and
the violent pirouette of each spring
and the ozone smell and
the way wet wood screams at the sky and
the way the sound
hits all ears the same
regardless of
their color or
what side of Line Avenue they’re from.

Remember what line you’re from
and to hell with the rest.
You must mind your own.
There’ll be water
if God wills it.

You are never too far lost if you still know
your father’s face and can still remember
getting milk from the tubes
in the
silver metal cooler
and the red cookie jar
lid as the
adults smoked at the green kids’ table
and everyone mostly had blue eyes
and red hair and there was always a phantom killer
lurking  
right beyond the only hope door
before you were ****** into the mirror
world and
*******, but
kids sure do have to make some
rough choices
before nine o’clock.

Keep remembering and when you remember,
remember even deeper
remember in yet greater detail and
practice that remembering until
you
ARE
the dust motes
the milk tube
Thursday
roots
sun
until you ARE each drop of sweat
until you ARE the phantom killer
and the red cookie jar lid
the straight line of smoke rising out
of the ashtray and
the motor and the
scream and the
ears and
you ARE all these things
and you ARE
and you can’t really say where these things begin or where
you end because you’re not sure that
anything really does end or
begin
anymore.

Beginnings and endings
haven’t much meaning after
everyone has
shown their cards and the worn places on the chairs have
met the table
one
last
time.