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Ghost Story

 

This new cold week pronounces

that you must leave me every night

with the setting sun

unremarkable

in the blinding stupor

of anything underhand ingested

wondering

when you’ll return

if you’ll return

how long you’ll be this time

when will it be warm again.

 

A few days ago,

recently broken like a condom that’s become a vengeful fossil

I sat on the A train

approaching the pancreas of the Brooklyn hipster enclave,

on my way to listen to contemporary ghost stories

told in fleeting rhyme

one part plaid sophistry, one part American absinthe.

I will listen to the orators

and I will drink their booze while I do so,

unconcerned by wayward spirits –

incensed instead by the ghosts that still have breath

and your Upper West Side address

 

And then she said on the phone:

“I’m gonna get my masters degree

in the art of pedagogy

smoking weed

writing

drinking like Behan stuck in a chimney.”

I said:

“That all sounds great.

But you stole that Behan line from me.”

 

Nothing much accomplished

No new life

Nothing new again

Nothing unexpected

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