"ghostlike" poems
***11 days, I spent in grey hospital socks
wandering halls bare, not even clocks
17 girls, all torn and broken inside
opened our wrists, drank cyanide
"behavior heath", but we knew was psych
held wandering souls, all pale and ghostlike
sat in a circle, we shared and we cried
of times we stole, drank, smoked and lied
stories of **** abuse and pain
somehow all one and the same
different faces and different lives
but most chose to end it with knives
but failure brought us all to this place
to learn a new name, gain a new face
fed us some pills and watched how we'd do
if we'd scream and suddenly turn blue
but only a few continued to fall
and theirs are the saddest stories of all
my heart broke each night as I sat and heard
one of the girls minds became blurred
still even now, I shed a tear
for every lost soul, that we never hear***
Jan 23, 2017
Jan 23, 2017 at 4:17 PM UTC
Sands of the beach,warms
to the glory of sunrise,the
red rays play gleefully on
their dunes giving them life,
A new dawn awakes to the
soft roar of the waves,rebellious
yet content.
Along the horizon the morning
fog removes her mystic veil to
reveal a ship,ghostlike,it slowly
approaches the shore,while seagulls
gyrate above in unclear patterns,
and the calm ocean in harmony with
the sky merge into the Oneness of Creation.
Jun 18, 2010
Jun 18, 2010 at 8:37 AM UTC
Water over stone speaks to me
Voices in my head or reality?
Bubbling, babbling, a fluid oration.
From liquid, an opus of reverberation.
Closer I get, speech becomes blurred.
A child, a crowd, an implicit word?
Retreat a step, lucid communique
Desire to immerse, ingest the parley.
Sit between banks in tears from on high
Hear her voice in the brook as I try
To understand, and follow the sentence at hand
A cacophony of silence sifted through sand.
Meaningless, mindless, numbing address
Just what’s so important she’s trying to stress?
Words from the distant, ghostlike, perchance
Wispy and passionate midsummer’s dance.
My ears reject resonance, but the mind draws it in
To decipher the past and perceive an old sin.
Apologetic, pleading, no mold to this play
Just babbling on, with no true thing to say.
Hands growing numb from water’s icy hold
Must leave this brook, for so I’ve been told
That mystery lives in the motion of hearing
Of water’s sweet journey beyond my heart’s clearing.
Aug 10, 2011
Aug 10, 2011 at 6:58 PM UTC
1.
You can never go home,
not to the home you left.
When you leave, you get bigger.
Not necessarily in girth, but in consciousness.
When you come back, everything,
even the walls of your parent's house,
seem to have shrunk.
2.
Look.....
Here comes the parade.
With its paper mache floats
and twirling batons.
Cub scouts and boy scouts,
all in a neat blue and drab green row,
followed by a high school marching band
playing "Stars and Stripes Forever".
From bygone wars, limbless surviving soldiers flinch with every cymbal crash.
3.
I watched billows of cottonwood clouds
swirl down a summer hometown avenue,
they met on the street corner for a song........
"Alley Oop", or "I Like Bread And Butter"
These ghostlike voices will live there forever,
innocent, asleep, numb, waiting.
Soon, the postman will bring your future.
Soon, you will be just a number on a lotery ball.
Soon, you will have to dissect luck or fate.
4.
I took my 87 year old Father to gather his tools
from his long time place of work.
The instruments of his livelihood.
He did not need them anymore, he had retired.
Some tools he had used since World War II,
some he made for a specific job.... never to use again.
All neatly placed in toolboxes built in the 30s and 40s,
yet not a trace of rust.
These were the tools of a tradesman,
a (Tool and Die Man).
He once told me, “Son, if I can’t fix it because I don’t have the right tool, I will make the tool”.
I thought him to be Superman.
But there I was, loading up my Father’s history,
to take home, to be sold to the highest bidder.
I myself have made my living playing music for audiences.
I also have tools.
Guitars, amplifiers, harmonicas, microphones.
There will come a day, in the not too distant future,
when I will have to “retire” the instruments of my livelihood.
Though I will not be as stoic as my World War II Father,
I will go kicking and screaming to the pawn shop,
remembering every song that fed me,
and every chord that made people dance.
May 29, 2014
May 29, 2014 at 8:38 PM UTC
poltergeist,
rattle my ribs, your cage
knock on my skull
remind me of when you
kissed me
quite saccharine
and bewitched me
body and soul.
charming
disarming
but faint as my breath
memories flooding from times
past
never last
and less tangible than smoke.
poltergeist,
your chilling whispers
your temperate moans
are all i have.
i cling
but i am tenuous,
nothing but a shadowy figure,
even more obscure
vague
ghostlike
than you.
Oct 1, 2012
Oct 1, 2012 at 8:48 PM UTC
I. the breathing of human nature
her poetry weaves a chimera
through ontario maples,
ghostlike songs intoned in late november breath:
*i don't really want to be a pretty girl... *
whispers of woodsmoke fall from sky
(sky, pink as cochineal, pink as avarice
sky, blue as bruises, as jazz, as tropical waters)
she steps from the fog and ash into the beckoning trees,
seduced by leaves,
an autumn saturnalia of honey, flame, amber,
nectar, pistil, anther.
she is cupola and chalice,
budding fuchsia and iron cherry--
but she writes and breathes
as if something more than a woman
who knows all the names for the ocean
stirs and struts inside her.
II. the statue and sobriquet
piano wires melt into statues,
heat steals rusty bottle caps
and bends them eerily into muses.
butterflies perch astutely on their shoulders,
violet, violent, a mosaic of shredded lilies and shellac,
paris in flames, flowering tea-houses,
the mariana trench, a thicket of morning glory.
nature sculpted this metaphysical tribute to her
for all that she has done, for all that her bent fingernails
and snow-covered lips have given
to inspire solstice and equinox--
in the night-songs of the crickets,
crystal bells and rustic chirps,
she was lauded.
III. declaration
she feels the songs in her eyelashes
and writes of wine and palest bone,
fragments of bashful moon,
roots her fingernails into the tarnished canadian willows
and finds her way through magnolia clouds and sea-spray sky;
after all, she can soar.
Dec 4, 2013
Dec 4, 2013 at 10:20 PM UTC
We walk like vapor-genies
in old growth forests,
ghostlike & elegant,
we move
like true fairytales,
gnomes whittle the way
for us
past exploding ferns.
It’s true,
we have seen the rain
coming down in torrents
along blue ridge trails,
fallen logs strewn about
like matchsticks,
fungi licks our shins
while lightning cracks
thunder like bullwhips.
I love moments like that…….
I hear Creedence every time we go.
And didn’t you know dear friends,
it’s spiritual medicine
for restless souls,
like my fellow companions & me.
Feb 8, 2014
Feb 8, 2014 at 3:21 PM UTC
The white fog creeps from the cold sea over the city,
Over the pale grey tumbled towers,--
And settles among the roofs, the pale grey walls.
Along damp sinuous streets it crawls,
Curls like a dream among the motionless trees
And seems to freeze.
The fog slips ghostlike into a thousand rooms,
Whirls over sleeping faces,
Spins in an atomy dance round misty street lamps;
And blows in cloudy waves over open spaces . . .
And one from his high window, looking down,
Peers at the cloud-white town,
And thinks its island towers are like a dream . . .
It seems an enormous sleeper, within whose brain
Laborious shadows revolve and break and gleam.
1.2k
My cat is alarming the daylight every single rotten day.
I wake up chocking from the un flickering dream,
Numb and kinda nervous, still watching the leftovers
Of characters fighting the path, back into reality.
All my nights since my life began revolving around my addictions
I patronized them, I begged them, I bribed them, what I did or what I not...
Exclusively the ordinary: buying flowers, candies,
Slot machines, **** videos, riding on elephants,
Cornering the cliffs, eating spiders, smoking ***
And beaming at the stars while they were changing music covers
Aside me, in slippers, house dresses and chewing cockies outta space,
Between a tooth and the next one located at five minutes array.
So you cannot call in my nature as a bee. Or not to bee.
All the **** that you can do or not in dreams, I did.
Results presumptuous. As all dreams are.
Vague ends fishing the tale of monster Colombre.
He's old and he's lounging in Poseidon's trident,
Into the space between the waves of gravity
Along with the pearl promised to every human being ,
As long as they are clapping hands for fairies not dying
And children's bed time stories that never lasts enough,
At every gasp they take when something murderous
Is happening while mothers turning into stone are reading,
The horrors of daily news at9 clock whisky .
For a first, they enter into the deem reality
My imaginary ghostlike friends. I waved them farewell, at last.
I don't wanna spend more time buying crickets or entertaining Terpsichore.
Now I'm busy writing songs about them, eating space cookies with a little prince and feasting on crickets with Maruska.
How did we get this far apart, we used to be so close together
How did we get this far apart, I thought this love would last forever.
Aug 13, 2013
Aug 13, 2013 at 4:21 AM UTC
I propose a toast
to a honeycombed crux
charred black
it wanes but it's no moon.
Molasses streaks the sky
disguised as light
it will not calm the alabaster globes
bobbing in the icebox of her gut.
Stolen
she wanders ghostlike and barren
expectant for the cuckoo's cry
consent to come
unhinged.
An overture in reds and golds -
hardly untruth
the hues bury shame:
eggshell-white and stuffed full of monsters.
Take heed
and never trust the oleander
the fox-eyed traitors
of the flower patch.
Oct 12, 2011
Oct 12, 2011 at 12:24 PM UTC
My boat is broken.
Pieced together from shipwrecks I've caused
Pieced together with the wretched lives I've taken.
Ancient decrepit wood
nailed on in disjointed configurations.
Puzzle pieces that don't quite fit right.
My flags are tattered and torn
black, and ghostlike
barely strung together
and hanging from mangled masts.
On the bow is a twisted Stygian crow
holding an ancient quill pen
bleeding obsidian black ink into the ocean
surrounding my boat
Turning the water as black as the death I cause
The air surrounding my ship is an icy cold blue air
almost too thin and cold to breath.
I am Cap'n Ghost Lee Waters.
long black tangled beard
hollow sunken eyes rimmed with aching death.
I move in frozen desecrations and icy darkness
I move towards you with murderous intent
And soon you will be within my grip
And you will feed my ship.
Aug 25, 2012
Aug 25, 2012 at 12:41 PM UTC
dawn's clouds curl upon
the cycle of horizon. light
seeps, wells up in a silent
garden of distant coastlines
and suspensions of dust
particles. torn pinnacles
arrange in geometries known
only to collapsing cities;
boulevards of tremulous
ghostlike figures, swaying
staccato below collected
damping leaves in perfect
symmetries against the sky of
tiled grains.
oh, if time stood
still. if the blood could freeze
in my capillary beds. if this
feeling would last for the
remainder of days.
Aug 1, 2013
Aug 1, 2013 at 11:53 PM UTC
What was it jogged my memory
what was it filled a gap
when as I sat and ruminated
this forgotten thought came back
from long ago when I was ten
I stood alone outside
the stars were coming out
the Jotunheimen land of giants
was lit by northern light
far off their ghostlike splendour
fair took my breath away
such mirage-like illusions
were real for me that day
Margaret Ann Waddicor 25th April 2016
Apr 28, 2016
Apr 28, 2016 at 1:47 PM UTC
There is no escape...
A creature of evil—the dark!
You roam through the night well hidden—
ghostlike!
Your strike –
a deathly finesse! Crushed, smitten,
he falls down – your victim, your mark.
There is no escape!
Jan 20, 2021
Jan 20, 2021 at 8:04 PM UTC
I suppose I had always wanted you to give up on me
I was always testing you to see if or when you would.
Finally, you did.
But it’s not all entirely my fault - you also put yourself in the position
of the antagonizer,
of the predator and the prey.
I was always just waiting for you to pounce on yourself
accidentally thinking you were pouncing on me
but I have long since given up on
falling for your traps. I set my own and fall for my own
and that is how it has always been.
Put me in a vulnerable straightjacket and I will talk you into trying it on for yourself,
Swiftly and seductively.
Dare me to tie you to a train track for the thrill of it and I will laugh and kiss you on the forehead and whisper goodbye
as the sound of a moving train will be heard in the near distance.
Blame me for disappointing you, because taking responsibility for your own feelings
Is always hard and close to impossible.
But I will always know who disappointed who, I will always know what kind of damage we willingly caused ourselves.
I am a mermaid that has fallen out of longing for legs
The only light that guides me now is that of the moon
And her unequivocal yet ghostlike offer
Of reprieve.
Nov 21, 2012
Nov 21, 2012 at 3:46 AM UTC
I walk old and gaunt
Floating ghostlike down old haunts
Martinelli
And Washington
And East Lake
I return
Far flung from a prodigal son.
Empty streets reflected in empty eyes
Power lines buzz in futile rebellion
To the silent black night.
I pull my jacket tight.
Stop at the Villager
In search of an old friend.
Security shakes me down
“Do you have a pocketknife?”
I laugh.
Look in at the eager faces.
They hail the old demon
I ran down in futile chases.
See Charlie and Sarge.
They’ve forgotten who I am
And shouldn’t remember
Anyway.
Turn back to the dark,
To the dim streetlights
Glowing exhausted and pale
Like me.
Light up,
And fill my lungs
With deathly relief.
Traffic lights mist
In cold colors
Where shadowed roads meet.
Something here died.
Something close,
Something warm.
I walk on,
Old and gaunt,
Floating ghostlike down old haunts.
Apr 1, 2013
Apr 1, 2013 at 10:02 PM UTC
And I looked at her then,
So many years after
I saw her
Smile for the first time
And long after
I swore to her endless
Days of pure love
Ghostlike I felt then
Observing her figure,
Or maybe it was a shadow.
Defeated I walked to her,
Breathing heavily,
Yearning for the past,
Even then I loved her so,
Oct 19, 2015
Oct 19, 2015 at 11:16 AM UTC
We've got an old way
of working things out
and an old life
(we are young, sister)
though you say we're young
(I never lie)
but how could we be
since that old dusty memory
is clear…. clear… clear
(ah, yes, you see we're young)
And I didn't say I didn't care
I just want to forget...
and would heaven
be at our door
if it never had happened
(Is that a question?)
well why did it happen?
just to us
(just to us, both of us)
When I am home
I get shivers
and cold feet
as they touch
where he had fallen
and you are out drinking
(I am always here)
as I am sinking
and the fat ugly droplets won't fall
they're weak things tugging at my scalp
if they fall, I can rest
(you sleep better than me)
I want them gone
but my skin is a cage is a desert
(darling, face it. You have dry eyes and a messed-up conscience-)
and whatever tries to seep out
evaporates into nothingness
why had this happened to me?
(you mean us, you silly girl)
What can come from tragedy-
this is no blessing in disguise
(it was bound to happen)
and your eyes are that of an old man's
(our eyes. Looked into the mirror recently? I think not)
yes we are older than him now
headhunters gather strength in their victims
we gather age
(we are young, don't lie to us)
chained together by skin
(bound together is a better word)
invisible to the eyes of others
you sit, ghostlike in the bar
(I haven't had a drink in years!)
Sometimes coming back to the skin we share
you are my sister
my blind spot
(the intelligent side, come to think of it)
the dirt on my tongue
which I haven't found a way to spit out yet
you crunch under my teeth
(you are the dirt, the whiner, the pessimist
the man was a worthless criminal.
I saw him dreaming of us.
and I cannot digest his foul thoughts,
I knew him better than you
I saved our life.)
Nov 27, 2012
Nov 27, 2012 at 8:11 AM UTC
I wish not...
To harbor these vessels.
For I know
In those holds is sickness.
Crates of longing
Often opened, empty.
Barells upon barrels
Of jet black loneliness
Forever splashing, unsealed, seeping.
So like my dreams
These ships of her navy.
Christened with shades of she
"Lost Love", "my One", "my only",
"nevermore", "ever after"...
They set no sail
Anchored securely off my shores.
Out of reach
Yet constant in presence.
Seeking no barter, no passage...
No plunder.
Ghostlike they haunt
All of what I most want.
And dreams like mine
Always calling
Taunting those black sails
In windless waters
Embracing no breeze
Only serving to open old wounds
My spyglass weeps
Fixed on yesterhorizons
Where gone and do go
Phantoms and shades
My sea of regrets.
Jfehlmann
Oct 11, 2013
Oct 11, 2013 at 3:16 AM UTC
We've got an old way
of working things out
and an old life
(we are young, sister)
though you say we're young
(I never lie)
but how could we be
since that old dusty memory
is clear…. clear… clear
(ah, yes, you see we're young)
And I didn't say I didn't care
I just want to forget...
and would heaven
be at our door
if it never had happened
(Is that a question?)
well why did it happen?
just to us
(just to us, both of us)
When I am home
I get shivers
and cold feet
as they touch
where he had fallen
and you are out drinking
(I am always here)
as I am sinking
and the fat ugly droplets won't fall
they're weak things tugging at my scalp
if they fall, I can rest
(you sleep better than me)
I want them gone
but my skin is a cage is a desert
(darling, face it. You have dry eyes and a messed-up conscience-)
and whatever tries to seep out
evaporates into nothingness
why had this happened to me?
(you mean us, you silly girl)
What can come from tragedy-
this is no blessing in disguise
(it was bound to happen)
and your eyes are that of an old man's
(our eyes. Looked into the mirror recently? I think not)
yes we are older than him now
headhunters gather strength in their victims
we gather age
(we are young, don't lie to us)
chained together by skin
(bound together is a better word)
invisible to the eyes of others
you sit, ghostlike in the bar
(I haven't had a drink in years!)
Sometimes coming back to the skin we share
you are my sister
my blind spot
(the intelligent side, come to think of it)
the dirt on my tongue
which I haven't found a way to spit out yet
you crunch under my teeth
(you are the dirt, the whiner, the pessimist
the man was a worthless criminal.
I saw him dreaming of us.
and I cannot digest his foul thoughts,
I knew him better than you
I saved our life.)
Jan 28, 2013
Jan 28, 2013 at 2:12 PM UTC
There it is again, that
almost unbelievable
vision of you on the
hospital bed, dead,
my son. Each day
brings it, some days
in a different form,
same pain again and
again. Time heals
nothing, it just tries
to objectify it, put it
out there in suspense,
ghostlike. I thought
the ache and pain
would ease in time's
moving hands, but
no, it just seals it in
to heart, vein, muscle
and pain. Come again,
my son, when and if
you can, my dead son,
my young brave Stoic man.
May 23, 2017
May 23, 2017 at 12:32 PM UTC
I was not always as lost and broken
As you see me now
No, not always.
When I was born into the world.
I was covered in tiny twinkling lights,
They were everywhere on me, so lovely.
You could hardly see
the spaces between them.
Lights on me everywhere.
That was before I found out how to be deceitful.
That the truth had many shades and hues.
from purest white
to darkest black
with so very many greys.
Sometimes a small light would fade as I lied.
Mom there won’t be alcohol there..
Other times a row of them went dark.
Mom I did not sleep with him. I promise.
Then some lies made them all glow dimmer.
It’s alright Dad don't worry
I don’t do any drugs.
Now much older
I walk alone in the city streets.
On a rainy dark night
the store windows
look like a hall of mirrors.
I can see my reflection ghostlike
all my pretty lights
Have faded away.
I look tired,lost and jaded.
But if you look very closely
between the falling raindrops,
like tears streaming down the windows.
You may see just a few of my lights left.
Only a glimmer of them
hardly visible at all.
So stubborn
they wont be the last ones
to go out.
They are around my heart
Aug 3, 2018
Aug 3, 2018 at 11:49 AM UTC
I don't feel like a happy person.
I don't feel like a happy person.
I feel like years of yearning would feel, grasping at dreams in the daylight.
I feel like guitars strumming, ghostlike.
I feel like wasted space and blurred lines, the weight of a song deftly moving in my head.
I never want to allow anything to hurt me again, I could promise. I want so much to walk the large, well-lit autumn-rimmed clear haven streets and not look back, always with destination. I am an artist not creating, I stagnate. I run.
The crying thunder breaks my fears into bugs and mud, it seeps through and out the pores and cracks of my skin. Somehow when the world decides to off you, a good night of sleep doesn't quite feel like the solution. How can I sleep with death swift under my eyes?
Confirm the beauty in my lack of rendition, and the galaxies deep in the creek of my dying summer heart.
Why are the night and day so different?; and do they have to be?
There's nothing tangible anymore in the seatbeltless buses of the south province (that's where I'm stuck). I crave one thing, but I know it's only a gap, a void I'm trying to fill. I can't stay here anymore is the only refrain that made sense to me when I sobbed it out loud.
So good riddance to my selfish fears and my hypocrisy. Hello new world, I am yours and you are mine.
Sep 8, 2015
Sep 8, 2015 at 11:31 PM UTC