I said they weren’t real,
And you said they were.
I should have understood.

I realise now that I’ve always been one.
I guess it’s hard to see from the inside, too.
Whispering through the walls,
I can’t collide with anything.

In the daytime, I would cry if I had any me left.
Instead I float,
and speak in monotone.

Aimless.
I think I’ve crossed every bridge.
They ask what I’m doing and I say I’m
Trying to find where I left myself.

I’m lying, though.
I know where to find me,
But I can’t go there, so I float.
Pretending to search, but really just
Tracing and retracing old paths.

When I return home in the evenings, exhausted,
I collapse into fever dreams.
Begging the pillow to understand the intent.
My tears, percolating, soak into it,
the smell of salt makes me think I’m by the sea,
And I find a tiny bit of myself.
So I get addicted.

Dull circle.
The only improvement is that I’ve
stopped hesitating.
Even the bus drivers glance at me for slightly
Longer now.
It’s because I haven’t killed it yet,
that which drags from my back spectrally.
I’m not clinical, and I don’t know if I can.

And when I really do have to be somewhere,
and at least pretend to be on the ground,
I chill out by imagining that short time
when I was walking happily
With my head in the clouds.

As temporary as coffee, though.
More, actually.
It takes roughly 6 hours to process caffeine,
I can manage 5 minutes without flying away again.
I guess my head just wasn’t built for being a grown up.

So when you look down at me and your eyes speak libraries,
Just know that I understand the problem,
But the solution is worse.

Are Ghosts Real?
Can you tell me please,
I’ve heard different opinions.
I Just wish I’d thought about it sooner because
There’s something in my skull and
It’s like acid.

The memory of One
Floating from room to room
And Me entirely unaware of it
Thinking that the noise it makes is
Just a process.
it’s a banshee really,
Screaming at Me silently, asking ‘can’t you fix this?’
Warning Me about what’s coming, too,
And I Just assume it wants attention,
so I, The Great and Powerful, so Grand and Special,
Deign to give attention on occasion, magnanimously.
The Glorious I,
the minimised it.
Just, Just, Just.


How bumbling, fumbling, dumb.

Hollow, too. I swear if you tap me you’ll hear my ribs jangle.

Mute also, unless it’s unimportant.

Who’s the Real Ghost, then?


So now a little bit of it has lodged in my own dripping brain
Repeating itself slowly and inexorably:
‘Remember this? Wasn’t that great? Never again, hahaha!’
Like a bad nursery rhyme for the manchild.
And whether or not I can do anything about it is immaterial
Because it has to happen.
Slowly. Inexorably.

———

I’m already reliving memories of my future:

Can you feel it, me? That’s your bones rusting.
Your jaw clenching permanently.
Your brow furrowing and never relaxing.
A tension that’ll eventually make you want to Just-
Not a concern. You’ll never do it, you wouldn’t dare.
So you squeeze tighter and tighter and tighter,
Your ears burst, your eyes fill up with fluid,
And your tongue swells out of your mouth.

Eventually, while the pluviophile finds comfort in rain,
you keel over a rainbow.
Standing next to your quivering, confused corpse will be the Tin Man saying: “Dude, I totally relate”;
The Lion saying “what a *****”;
The Scarecrow trying to parody you, but he seems the same as before;
Toto licking your stone face trying to revive you;
Dorothy’s long gone, though. She had help;
The Witch of the West delighting in your unsexy self-deprecation;
The cast dancing around you, holding hands, singing.
You Just muttering to yourself about rain and if onlys.

And before you blame circumstance,
You will be reminded that it was all preventable:
There was an old dented oilcan, with “EFFORT and CONSIDERATION” printed on it,
Floating along right beside you.

— — —

Back to Now, for a minute.
The past is your present, yours alone, and could have been your future.
Instead you sit on the same bench
(only in your mind though, you’d never actually go back to the crime scene)
where you thought you had finally found tenderness
And the people go past, not staring,
And you realise that no,
Tenderness with a capital C found you, put up with you briefly, then said:
“well, **** that”.