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”.
