Come on All You Ghosts Read online

But I want to be free

  Of this important feeling:

  To love each other more

  Than we currently do

  Is a terrible violence

  To our future selves.

  Which is not what I want.

  As I Cross the Heliopause at Midnight, I Think of My Mission

  Drunker than Voyager 1

  but not as Voyager 2 I rode my blue

  bike back through the darkness

  to my lonely geode cave of light

  awaiting nothing under the punctured

  dome. I had achieved escape

  velocity drinking clear liquid starlight

  at the Thunderbird with a fingerless

  Russian hedge fund inspector and one

  who called himself The Champ. All

  night I felt fine crystals cutting

  my lips like rising up through

  a hailstorm. And the great vacuum

  cleaner that cannot be filled moved

  through my chest, gathering

  conversation dust and discharging

  it through my borehole. During

  one of many silences The Champ

  took off his face and thus were many

  gears to much metallic laughter

  revealed. Long ago I forgot

  the word which used to mean in truth

  but now expresses disbelief. So

  quickly did my future come. You who

  are floating past me on your inward way,

  please inform those glowing faces

  who first gave me this shove I have

  managed to rotate my brilliant

  golden array despite their instructions.

  Lamp Day

  All day I’ve felt today is a holiday,

  but the calendar is blank.

  Maybe it’s Lamp Day. There is

  one very small one I love

  so much I have taken it everywhere,

  even with its loose switch.

  On its porcelain shade are painted

  tiny red flowers, clearly

  by someone whose careful

  hand we will never know.

  Because it’s Lamp Day I’m trying

  to remember where I got it,

  maybe it was waiting for me

  in the house on Summer Street

  I moved into almost exactly

  17 years ago. I think

  without thinking I just picked it

  up from the floor and put it

  on my desk and plugged

  it into the socket and already

  I was working. So much

  since that moment has happened.

  On Lamp Day we try

  not dreamily but systematically

  to remember it all. I do it

  by thinking about the hidden

  reasons I love something

  small. When you take

  a series of careful steps

  to solve a complex problem,

  mathematicians call it an algorithm.

  It’s like moving through

  a series of rooms, each with

  two doors, you must choose one,

  you can’t go back. I begin

  by sitting on a bench in the sun

  on September 21st thinking

  all the walks I have taken

  in all the cities I have chosen

  to live in or visit with loved ones

  and alone make a sunlit

  and rainy map no one

  will ever be able to hold.

  Is this important? Yes and no.

  Now I am staring

  at clean metal girders.

  People keep walking past

  a hotel, its bright

  glass calmly reflecting

  everything bad and good.

  Blue boots. Bright glass.

  Guests in this moment. A child

  through the puddles steps

  exuberant, clearly feeling the power.

  I am plugged in. I am calm.

  Lamp Day has a name.

  Just like this cup

  that has somehow drifted

  into my life, and towards which

  sometimes for its own reasons

  my hand drifts in turn.

  Upon it is written the single

  word Omaha.

  Poem for Hannah

  The tiny bee on its mission

  died before it felt a thing. Its

  body rested for a moment

  on the railing of my sunny

  porch in California. Then

  wind took it away. You

  are an older sister now so

  it’s true the world owes you

  massive reparations. Also

  you have special alarm

  pheromones implanted

  in your nose that explode

  with Phacelia distans

  i.e. wild heliotrope each time

  what they say will happen

  turns out to be a compendium

  of what can never exactly

  be. Today the electric bus

  full of humans listening

  through tiny flesh colored

  earbuds to the music news

  or literature perfectly calibrated

  to their needs kneels before

  the young man in his gleaming

  black wheelchair. Inside

  green laboratories experiments

  in the realm of tiny particles

  are being for our vast benefit

  completed. Already I can see

  the same little wrinkle I have

  appearing on your brow.

  You were born to feel a way

  you don’t have a word for.

  Dobby’s Sweatshirt

  With those two words in my mouth

  I woke up laughing, for only the second

  time in my life. Before bed I had been

  reading a book about the Renaissance.

  All they really know is it was dirty.

  I slept and dreamt of complicated

  financial arrangements. Then

  the Midwest. I have always loved

  the loneliness of those midsized cities

  strewn along the plains, in them

  it seems to me my heart would at last

  be that open field where an entirely

  new love could snow. Dobby lives

  in Minnesota and seems basically happy.

  I believe I’ve never seen him

  wear a sweatshirt. I’m not even sure

  that’s his real name. Is he a ghost?

  Probably. A ghost of happiness. Dobby’s

  sweatshirt. It’s where I want to bury

  my face when lonely possibility comes.

  The New Lustration

  Last night I heard faint music moving

  up through the floor. The thought

  I could be one who falls asleep and dreams

  some brave act and wakes to actually

  do it flapped through me, brief breeze

  through a somnolent flag. Across

  the room my cell phone periodically

  shone a red light indicating someone

  was failing to reach me. Your body

  kept barely lifting the sheet. I think

  my late night thoughts and feelings

  about my life are composed

  of fine particles that drift far from me

  to periodically settle on apartment

  or office buildings. Feel the heat

  and pulsation within. A man sits

  in the Institute of National Memory

  examining files. They contain accounts

  of what certain people believed other

  more powerful people would want

  to permit themselves to believe

  regular people were choosing to do

  all through the years that like terrible

  ordinary babies one after another

  crawled, grasping daily acts and pla
cing

  them into these files anyone now

  can hold. Read about the life

  of the great ordinary Citizen Z. How

  he attended funerals and horrible boring

  literary parties, aging and thinking

  of his anonymity and writing journals

  he later felt he must destroy, and calmly

  against his will periodically meeting

  in hotel bars with the sad men who asked

  questions that along with the answers

  they all knew would end in these yellow files.

  Each has a label marked with three

  or four obscure numbers followed by

  a dash followed by three initials.

  Europe you had your time. Now

  it is ours to drag everyone into a totally

  ghost free 21st century whiteness.

  Never to Return

  Today a ladybug flew through my window. I was reading

  about the snowy plumage of the Willow Ptarmigan

  and the song of the Nashville Warbler. I was reading

  the history of weather, how they agreed at last

  to disagree on cloud categories. I was reading a chronicle

  of the boredom that called itself The Great Loneliness

  and caused a war. I was reading mosquitoes rode

  to Hawaii on the same ship that brought the eucalyptus

  to California to function now as a terrible fire accelerator.

  Next to me almost aloud a book said doctors can

  already transplant faces. Another said you know January

  can never be June so why don’t you sleep little candle?

  A third one murmured some days are too good,

  they had to have been invented in a lab. I was paging

  through a book of unsent postcards. Some blazed

  with light, others were a little dim as if someone

  had breathed on the lens. In one it forever snowed

  on a city known as the Emerald in Embers, the sun had

  always just gone behind the mountains, never to return,

  and glass buildings over the harbor stayed filled with

  a sad green unrelated light. The postcard was called

  The Window Washers. In handwriting it said

  Someone left an important window open, and Night

  the black wasp flew in and lay on the sill and died.

  Sometimes I stop reading and find long black hairs

  on my keyboard and would like you to know that in 1992

  I mixed Clairol Dye #2 with my damaged bleached hair

  to create a blue green never seen before, my best look

  according to the girl at the counter who smiled only once,

  I know less than I did before, and I live on a hill where

  the wind steals music from everything and brings it to me.

  II

  Together Yet Also Apart

  Go we must in search of searching

  not very helpfully said the little red ant

  attached to the golden chain attached to

  my wrist. He was no bigger than a

  molecule, the chain was a quantum chain.

  It was Sunday morning, we were

  following the restless backpackers into

  the city guidebooks called a manageable

  fountain of leisure. Unbeknownst they

  carried dark lanterns, they were

  Nameless ones. The inhabitants into

  various churches emptied leaving only

  scattered women in multicolored house

  coats feeding pigeons and a boy skater

  performing slenderly his fabulous tricks.

  Some parks are small, perfect for falling

  asleep. Then you can wake and leave

  them for someone who needs to find

  out what happens when you build

  a grand arcade of your finest thoughts

  to shimmer, waiting for no one. I lay on

  my back. Light with the faintest tetrophene

  hint touched lightly my blue metallic skin.

  A bike leaned against a wall. I thought

  of my first day planner, turquoise and

  laminated not unlike the calm and glassy

  lake I broke the surface of as a child

  those days everyone was equal. So much

  architecture, said my russet friend. He

  was a menshevik, red but also transparent.

  If you bent and looked very closely

  you could see the pulse behind each of

  his black ventricular eyes. A golem

  stopped to check his touristical map.

  He wanted to see a few more rooftops

  against the sky before he sighed and

  took the funicular up the long curved

  path that leads to the castle and turned

  totally unlike me into dust.

  They

  I remember the house

  where I first lived, it was

  small and wooden

  and next door to a loud

  friendly catholic family

  whose three sons Andy

  and something and something

  else constantly with mysterious

  lack of effort flicked

  an orange basketball

  through a rusty hoop

  and one afternoon taught

  me duh. Once

  a car screeched and hit

  a girl whose name

  I just remembered Julia!

  We weren’t there

  but came running out,

  it was quiet and we stood

  a little away from the man

  from the car who stood

  over her, there was

  a dark spot on her leg,

  it was broken, she was fine.

  But they decided to limit

  the danger by making

  the street one way

  with a speed limit of 30.

  Who were they?

  Since then they have been

  here looking over

  my shoulder, sometimes

  taking care, at others

  making the wrong decisions

  leading to more bad things.

  There’s no way

  to talk about it

  except maybe right now.

  Now when I look

  at photographs of me

  and the twins I hear

  the green glass beads

  separating my bedroom

  from theirs clicking in my mind,

  is that a memory? Or

  what I know those

  sorts of beads sound like

  in a breeze? Every day

  one block up to Connecticut Ave.

  and over to Oyster

  Bilingual where I sometimes

  was asked to stand

  in front of the class and hold

  up the picture of a duck

  or a house when the teacher

  said the words in Spanish

  and English both. I played

  Santa in the Christmas play

  which made sense.

  One day Luis stabbed

  another kid with a pencil

  in the throat, he was also fine.

  Another day I went to visit

  a friendly girl and ran

  straight through the plate glass

  window in her apartment building

  lobby and out the door

  and home, my parents

  never knew, I was as I would

  now say unscathed. Soon

  after we moved to Maryland

  where the new Catholics

  were threatened and mean,

  but that’s a different story

  I don’t yet remember.

  I think once a parent dies

  the absence in the mind

  where new impressions would

  have gone is clear, a kind

  of space or vacuum
related memories

  pour into, which is good.

  Looking Up

  from a book I was reading about

  a dead architect I saw not the fabulous

  empty pale blue almost white desert

  sky above the brand new sewage

  treatment plant. Nor my handwriting

  in which I had thankfully never written

  with a huge glowing made of fire

  finger stellar advertisements for starlight

  in the sky. Just a few artificial contrails

  made by jets on their way to Denver

  for me with my eyes to follow,

  fading like the thought that had made

  me raise my face to catch them

  at all. Now only the pure white drug

  interdiction blimp tethered to a bristling

  radar installation remains, scanning

  the sixty or so miles between here

  and the border for movement dispositive

  of a human trying to survive. Goodbye

  Robert Creeley, you died looking out

  over the plains. No more will

  your fractured days emerge for us

  to live a little while in, though we have

  your collected poems of which

  there are many. And farewell Kenneth

  Koch, whom I also never met.

  Reading his kaleidoscopes causes me

  to wonder if perhaps he is not

  a lawn chair, knocked over last night

  by a pack of javelina that scared

  Richard awake and made him wander

  to his table, still half asleep. Or

  a blue telephone, waiting in the forest

  to ring. This book you are holding

  is about dying, as will be the next one

  upon which you lay your hands.

  Thank you for listening. Now let us

  all go separately into the city and forget

  everything but our little prescriptions.

  April Snow

  Today in El Paso all the planes are asleep on the runway. The world

  is in a delay. All the political consultants drinking whiskey keep

  their heads down, lifting them only to look at the beautiful scarred

  waitress who wears typewriter keys as a necklace. They jingle

  when she brings them drinks. Outside the giant plate glass windows

  the planes are completely covered in snow, it piles up on the wings.

  I feel like a mountain of cell phone chargers. Each of the various

  faiths of our various fathers keeps us only partly protected. I don’t