Come on All You Ghosts (6 page)

That man looks like a snake charmer

Rufus said, holding his beer. That

man has skills. Rufus works

with me at the university. Border

wars, rebellions, inspectors. Like

a 9th century T'ang Dynasty bureaucrat

Rufus had survived them all. He

told me about several attempts

on his life disguised as practical jokes

and birthday parties. The department

secretary it's true does bare

her teeth when you come near

the Xerox machine like a beaver fearing

an enema. Years ago Rufus read

a book about Zeno of Citium and invented

a brilliant infallible system of relying

on divine intelligence to organize

university forms. No longer

did he try to shape circumstances

to his desires. The world is a blindly

running machine. Now he is ever

more slowly coasting towards

without reaching total stasis. His desk

is a medium sized wooden lake

on which float two staplers. I don't

even remember where I was born.

I might be a replicant. How would

I know? The snake charmer was sitting

at the bar, holding a glass full

of ice and clear liquid, watching a game.

I had to admit he had the air

of someone wearing a turban.

Any skills he had were very well hidden.

When I'm washing my hands I think of a name

of someone I don't know. Like Evangeline

or Rufus or BobBob. And I sing Happy Birthday

inserting that name at the proper time,

stopping only and turning off the water

when I reach the end of the song. This

little game ensures I am washing my hands

just long enough for the little soap particles

to bind to all the nasty dirt ones

and wash them down the drain.

Which makes me feel protected.

Like going to what we called “temple”

but actually was a church we shared

with some Ursulines, an order of Christians

dedicated to the education of girls and care

of the sick and otherwise needy. We

used it on Friday nights and Saturday days

and they on Sundays of course, sometimes

Saturday evenings all full of emptiness

troubles and peace and done with our final

service we saw them crossing the street

and moving like phantoms towards the building

already no longer ours. In the lobby

there was a giant baptismal font made of stone

and at Christmas little carvings of Jesus

on the cross hung up on every wall. None

of us cared and we thought ourselves

good and brave for sharing and also safe

from all true Christian soldiers. Never

with terrible swords made of virtue and light

shall they trouble us, they shall pass us by.

I woke up early and saw a fox.

It was leaping and dragging its glorious

red and white tail behind it across

the road. It held a grasshopper in its mouth,

which it dropped when it saw the small

carcass of a young javelina. Last night

I was woken by their hairless rooting through

a field of cactus in moonlight. They all

stood together, ears rotated forward into

the breeze, protecting the single mother

protecting a pair of young. Their

mustachioed labium superius oris i.e.

upper lip protects a gentle tusk

the color of greywater. I almost sympathize

with their corporate need to snuffle

and roam in packs until dawn returns them

to hollows they made in the ground.

But my sleep does not. Thus I shone

a very powerful flashlight into their midst

and watched them scramble across

the highway, dispersing. Thus I walked

out into this morning, wearing a shirt

the color of a dandelion, whistling

an uncertain tune about the mild unequal

life I would like to know better of a rich

acquaintance in the Mexican city of Guadalajara.

In old black and white documentaries

sometimes you can see

the young at a concert or demonstration

staring in a certain way as if

a giant golden banjo

is somewhere sparkling

just too far off to hear.

They really didn't know there was a camera.

Cross legged on the lawn

they are patiently listening to speeches

or the folk singer hunched

over his little brown guitar.

They look as tired as the young today.

The calm manner in which their eyes

just like the camera rest

on certain things then move

to others shows they know

no amount of sunlight

will keep them from growing suddenly older.

I have seen the new five-dollar bills

with their huge pink hypertrophied numbers

in the lower right hand corner and feel

excited and betrayed.

Which things should never change?

The famous cherry trees

I grew up under

drop all their brand new buds

a little earlier each year.

Now it's all over before the festival begins.

The young.

Maybe they'll let us be in their dreams.

Sometimes I am happy to be

here in this bright room

drifting through music made by others

looking down on the heads of the people passing

teaching each other that life is forgoing

I think everyone I can see is partially sad

because we will never be fully forgiven

this apartment building has seen so much moving through the city

well ordered troops

many proud careful mothers and fathers pushing carriages

many people holding hands or talking on their cell phones and crying

hundreds of girls each wearing a plastic tiara

carefully placed on her head by the mayor at the annual spring parade

this building with the ordinary green facade

no one will see as they wait for the storm to pass

their breath creating giant cloud forms

from my window I can see their heads

it makes me smile a little with love how much they look like moose in the zoo

how they stand very patiently close to one another

under the door of the sky

their memories gracefully blundering into the long cool forest

full of shadows

our life is the one we already have

Right now in the rest area it's sunny and cold. Someone

is taking a picture of the vending machine. I have

never been sad for appropriate reasons. Never

have I sat in the wet grass looking not at dark sky

but blue paper someone had carefully taken

hours to punch out in a shape invisible

until the flashlight is turned on below. Earlier

when I said everything is a switch immediately

the interlocking gears in the self-hatred mechanism

began to grind. Part of me is always about to turn

in a direction I will never go. Trucks roar

filled with things people need. Sometimes I sound

to myself like a robot. Too many times as a teen

I stared onto the surface of a mysterious

solvable multifaceted cube. I can see you don't need

me to stretch out my hand to point to dread

and its little button. The door swings open,

one entire miserable summer I should have been happy

flashes in the word molybdenum. I saw people

mining cinder from volcanoes. Cinder

is made into blocks lighter than cement to hold

the plywood shelves holding one or more

than one person's books. To intermingle

is so difficult to extricate. Shells marine organisms

abandon dissolve into ooze. Found near waterfalls

it's known as travertine. Goodbye, someday

I'll invent the magic lantern, then music,

then whatever's the opposite of the need

to control everything so it can be perfect for you.

In the park the giant gold head

of some expired tyrant

watches everyone

breathing and thinking

old mothers with their prams

solitary lovers

not realizing they are stretching

out their fingers and grasping the air

during the day the gold dome

of his head

grows unbearably hot

then during the night

cools when no one is in the garden

but the trees

with their leaves like words in a dictionary

you can imagine touching

but never quite reach

and feel a little power and wonder

who is truly happy

the tyrant was a very geometric planner

so he built these boulevards

and homes with their metal mansard roofs

that tilt a little backward

making attics

people like to live in

even though the rain

is loud as it falls easily off of the metal roofs into the street

outside the window I see green leaves moving

closer to each other in the breeze

over a comically diminutive black electric car

a woman wearing a blue cloak

touches a device in her hair

this morning you left

by means of the futuristic light-rail system

today my mouth

is an artificial lake

I am too tired to swim across

later I will read

but for now I must sit very still

and think of the city

as a body that changes

and probably will not live forever

or an instrument that plays a giant song

no one will ever be large enough to hear

roads lead to the peripheries

dizzyingly through the two chief lungs

which are two great forests

full of trees filtering the air

my particular lime green railing

tings

again the song begins

This afternoon I heard

the small voice speaking again,

though no one was there.

I could not hear the words

though from the helpless

complicated tone I knew

it was something like

someday you will realize

you already know you must go

elsewhere to be free.

Maybe the white island

with just a few necessary buildings

you saw once from above

as if you were flying.

All your friends in gentle

laughing disputation are already

waiting. For now I settle

for trying to picture

each of their faces.

But when I close my eyes

I just keep seeing this horrible

actual sunny floor I have

scattered pages of my handwriting

on, searching for a pattern.

And also this table. Upon

it lies a yellow book containing

a translation of the half-burned

gospel that says often Jesus

kissed Mary on the mouth.

Reading it makes me feel

as if the true future like the son

of a dethroned king long ago

hid in a cave, trying to silence

its breathing. The great

black indeterminate stallion

pounded implacably by.

Now there is only silence

like an auditorium after

a modern composition

had just finished perfectly

destroying our foolish

cherished ideas of music.

When I think very hard

about my thoughts they seem

to me to be very small horses

attached to invisible reins

attached to facts. And what

of my memories? Like sleeping

in daylight. A decade ago

I lived in Massachusetts,

a shallow terrible installation

leaking smoky versions

of myself, each in turn

emitting weak soluble ideas

like people care only because

they do not even know

they feel they must. And now

I am here in California,

happy to be though always

part of me is thinking of my friends

and their shadows, patiently

waiting for my shadow to join them.

IV

1

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.

Goodbye. 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.

2

Reader, it doesn't seem

very strange to be

here in this apartment

thinking of you

and how we will someday

(right now!) be together.

I hear hammering,

workmen are fixing

the front steps,

as I step out over them

into the morning

my mind is wearing

a black suit

like a funeral director's assistant

prepared for very serious work

that has nothing to do with me.

Now in the café

very carefully blasting

my veins with coffee

asking what do we know

and what can we learn?

above me a painted waterfall

and stars on the ceiling

all this peace

makes me feel queer

the mysteries

the mysteries

we could never have predicted

they become our lives

and less confused

calmly in them

we rotate not psychotic or tragic.

I have lived in the black crater

of feeling every moment

is the moment just after

one has chosen forever

to live in the black crater

of having chosen to live in the black crater

and therefore I know

exactly why David Foster Wallace

took his life away from himself

even though he was also taking it away

from everyone he knew.

This morning I was woken

by soft sour breath

a slight fleck of metal

in the organic

like a field of titanium gravestones

growing warmer in the sun.

I could breathe it for hours

but now it is gone

which is ok as long as long as the exhaling

somewhere else continues.

Her job is to incrementally

regulate the conduct

of those who regulate

the city and mine is to be

happy for a few moments thinking

I could actually be

one who is happy watching

afternoon fog pour

predictably down

into sunny Noe Valley

from cold Twin Peaks.

3

If you know

the story of Marco Polo

you know after a long journey he came

upon the Mongol armies sleeping

and wisely turned back

already composing

a much more fabulous story

than not being able

to report being torn

apart by four horses

attached to his limbs.

From then on wherever

he went or did not he brought back

wondrous marvels and lies.

In this poem

every word means exactly

what it means

when we use it in every day life.

So when I say I went

to the grocery store

and felt too ashamed

to ask where are the eggs

only a very small part of me means

I have returned to report

we have by our mothers

been permanently destroyed.

When the president

opens his hands

a door knob

made of an unnaturally

heavy substance

floats up to the blue

door to the worry factory.

Open it and down

drift all the 21st century

problems, stick out

your tongue and maybe

you will taste sunlight

and maybe ash.

Go little president!

We are all blowing

into your wings!

We promise to no longer

be transactional

in our personal dealings!

We promise no longer

to know some things

are important but one

does not need to know why.

If the heart makes

the sound of two violins

sleeping in a baby carriage,

then new technologies

cannot make us

both more loyal and free.

Wayward free radical dreams,

I want to be loyal,

I say it once into the darkness.

Come on all you ghosts,

try to make me forget you.

4

Come with me

and I will show you

terrible marvels.

The little cough I heard in my mind

was one I remembered

my father made just as he died,

we weren't sure

if it was his last breath

or just some air left in his lungs,

not that it matters.

Please don't feel the least bit sorry

for me or yourself,

everyone you have ever seen

has a dead father,

some are just walking around alive

but it's temporary,

so bring your sorrow

for everyone out into the street,

in the sun. If a nation

can fall asleep

it can wake up not

exactly angry but a little dizzy

with pleasant hunger.

A glass of juice.

A melancholy. Then remember

we all have something important

to do today in the sun.

Come on all you ghosts,

all you young holding hands

or alone, all you older

people and people of middle

indeterminate age,

we need you, winter is not

through with us.

The sea seems more

than a little angry,

and over it blows

a very cold breeze

that is also the color grey.

In this room with its black desk

sometimes I hear

the crystal factory whirring

under a sky

the color of black

tabletops entranceways

and dead light bulbs.

Are those your hands

on the switches

ghosts? All day I have been

feeling blind, dizzy and enclosed,

as if I were being carried

in the hand of a great being

who insisted he was still

but I could feel the motion.

5

Come on all you ghosts.

Bring me your lucky numbers

that failed you, bring me

your boots made of the skin

of placid animals

who stood for a while in the snow.

Bring me your books

made of blue sky

stitched together with thread

made of the memory

of how warm

even the most terrible

among us has felt

the skin of his or her beloved

in the morning to be.

Come on all you ghosts,

try to make me forget

one summer lost

in a reservoir and another

I keep in my chest.

Come on all you ghosts,

try to make me repeat

the most terrible thing I said

to someone and I will

if the mind of that someone

could ever be eased.

Come on let's vote

for no one in the election

of who is next to die.

Come on all you ghosts,

I know you can hear me,

I know you are here,

I have heard you cough

and sigh when I pretend

I do not believe

I have to say something important.

Probably no one will die

of anything I say.

Probably no one will live

even a second longer.

Is that true?

Come on all you ghosts,

you can tell me now,

I have seen one of you becoming

and I am no longer afraid,

just sad for everyone

but also happy this morning I woke

next to the warm skin

of my beloved. I do not know

what terrible marvels

tomorrow will bring

but ghosts if I must join you

you and I know

I have done my best to leave

behind this machine

anyone with a mind

who cares can enter.