Come on All You Ghosts Read online

  want to talk on the phone to an angel. At night before I go to sleep

  I am already dreaming. Of coffee, of ancient generals, of the faces

  of statues each of which has the eternal expression of one of my feelings.

  I examine my feelings without feeling anything. I ride my blue bike

  on the edge of the desert. I am president of this glass of water.

  Little Voice

  I woke this morning to the sound of a little voice

  saying this life, it was good while it lasted, but I just

  can’t take it any longer. I’m going to stop shaving

  my teeth and chew my face. I’m going to finish inventing

  that way to turn my blood into thread and knit

  a sweater the shape of a giant machete and chop

  my head right off. The leaves had a green

  aspect, all their faces turned down towards the earth.

  This is exactly how I wanted to act, but I didn’t

  know where the little voice had hidden, and anyway

  who talks like that? What a loss, another tiny

  brilliant mind switched off by that same big boring finger.

  Clearly life is a drag, by which I mean a net that keeps

  pulling the most unsavory and useful boots we

  either put on lamenting, or eat with the hooks of some

  big idea gripping the sides of our mouths and yanking them

  upward in a conceptual grimace. Said the little voice,

  that is. I was just half listening, one quarter wondering

  what the little park the window looked onto was named,

  and one quarter thanking the war I knew was somewhere

  busy returning all those limbs to their phantoms.

  Never Before

  My neighbors, my remnants, in what have you chosen

  to bury your heads? Shadow, said one mote

  in an auditorium after a lecture. Some

  archive explorer had just finished discussing

  a group of islands. Inside me for a while

  a tribe had theorized purely and wrongly

  its location merely on the basis of tides. I was

  feeling extinct, and wishing for a sudden

  totally silent sliding out from the wall of twenty

  or so very excellent beds so we the audience

  could together engage in further collective

  dreaming. I would describe that lecturer’s voice

  as twilight shadow smeared origami cloudlet

  but the historical ceiling gilded by the names

  of agreed-upon great thinkers is a beautiful dowager

  making her sleepy wishes into dimness

  soon to retire gracefully known. I hear soft

  seventies cell phone songs. Come home

  those who love a librarian aspect. I am one,

  for give her time and she will answer any question

  no matter how spiral, no matter how glass,

  so slow to judgment you can sit among her

  like a reading room and read and think

  until the docents come, they move as trained,

  as trained they place a careful hand on our shoulder.

  The door locks automatically but not before

  wind slips in to do its research on blackness

  which gets even blacker, on the fabulous black

  dust intercom orchard of what happens

  when people fall asleep in their dreams and dream

  what they are. Have I mentioned lately

  I have been reading a book about a steam powered

  carriage we are actually in moving slowly

  through the countryside towards the kingdom

  and its ruined citizens? Have I mentioned tonight

  we shall both stand before the enormous spiral

  of wrecking balls in a dress made of laughing glass?

  Yellowtail

  The wind made a little movement

  as if it were trying to reassemble.

  I looked up from my affidavit. Sometimes

  my life feels taped, and quiet evenings

  I listen back. I hear the humming of the car

  and through the windshield see the road

  twisting down a series of cliffs to a very small

  blue ocean that like the placid eye

  of a beast that regarded our lives without

  any desire to eat them grew larger

  and stared a little past us, absently

  flecked with gold. I would like now to believe

  I felt like a leaf. Each night I told

  my brother and sister ever more fabulous

  stories about far away humanoid beings

  with ordinary loves and concerns

  swept up into galactic battles for peace

  in which the dark forces

  with their superior weapons and numbers

  were always defeated by a ragtag company

  led by slightly better versions of us. No one

  ever asked where we were going.

  It was all very clear without anyone

  saying the dunes and the sea

  would never hurt us. Every morning

  I opened my eyes so gently I hardly

  noticed the difference. Before I was even

  awake I would already be flying

  a Japanese kite, or sitting underneath

  my favorite tree, biting my nails. Perhaps

  I am still not supposed to say

  advanced translucent beings with the spirits

  of animals walked among us. Light

  brushed their human hair and cast

  their shadows across the tree trunks

  or our faces among our games. Someone

  was always strumming a guitar with a bird

  made of pearl inlaid at the edge of the sound hole

  and singing a tune about how helpful

  most people are, especially strangers.

  You Have Astounding Cosmic News

  Dear sociologists, I have been asked to explain poetry to you. Thus

  in the offices of dazed lute press the clicking begins. Lately

  we’ve been conducting field experiments into our private thoughts. One

  faction next to the soul shaped watercooler wonders whether

  there’s any reason at all to remember the feeling of being a child. Is

  it best to imagine oneself again beneath the desk as the rusted

  air raid siren explodes with its bi-monthly ritual Wednesday afternoon

  fear distribution? Like you I was always holding particular crayons

  in the dimness of certain morning assemblies. I have been told

  some of you think the only constant is constant observation. I know

  city planners designed the city and still there are diffusionists who pace

  the deep blue edge of do you know you can never try to discover

  why why flowers in the cubicles. Between you and me the buildings

  also have a space for the sparrow named never who does not sing

  yes the cities die when you leave them, yes no one cares what you do.

  The glass covered in dust windows of the thrift store display

  a mirror from the 1920s. If you take it it will no longer regard young

  lovers with important thoughts pushed towards the mighty river. I

  will fall in love exactly about a million times and then I will die. Clouds

  playing dominos agree. At Everest on Grand someone eats yak discussing

  the endless undeclared war among the neutral provinces. Long

  metallic articulated girders cast thin shadows over thousands of windows.

  A photograph of a pacifist smiles. He wore a white suit, was a friend

  to the poor and worked for the union of unemployed telegraph workers

  who listen for signals pulsing as Joni Mitchell never said from the heart of

  a distant star. He
was like my grandfather, after he died the city fathers

  did not know what they were building when they built a museum

  to encase a window in a wall brought from a far away country where

  it once overlooked the sea. Evenings through giant speakers people listen

  to troubled sounds whales bounce off continental shelves. Go tell

  everyone everything is related, the rich own the clouds, and you can

  always locate yourself with so many shadows to instruct you.

  Poem for Tony

  Sometime around 11 p.m. the you I was thinking of

  left my head. I was in bed, among my white ten billion

  thread count cotton sheets. The pillowcases cradled

  my head like the earth a very young carrot.

  This very white moment of being alone without

  any loneliness I ruled and was ruled by like a benevolent

  dictator full of human feelings he manages each day

  to actualize for the benefit of his people. He feels

  very protective about their souls. To him they seem

  to be either tiny milagros in the form of boots

  or horses made of pounded flat silver, like the pieces

  in the homemade board game that glowed

  the way they did just a little when it was his turn

  as a child to choose which would represent him,

  or small blue aspersions cast like the outside

  part of an innocent candle flame that does not burn

  your finger if you move it very quickly across.

  This moment will never return. You were gone,

  for a while I heard crickets and some kind of bird

  doing something there is probably a word for between

  hooting and whistling. Then the train, which despite

  all those songs is not very mysterious at all.

  Poem for John McCain

  Today I read about the factory

  where they make the custom rolling ladders

  everyone has probably seen

  rising through silent rooms

  full of boxes or shelves

  crossed by motes in the sun

  #5 is my favorite

  made of black walnut

  with its hinge that folds a small surface out

  for reading or placing

  books on as you shelve them

  it’s easy to imagine working in a library

  for me at least there is something shameful

  about how clearly I can see it

  like I am thinking something important is not

  I say tomorrow waits for me

  but I don’t know

  if I knew anything about the wars

  besides what I have been safely told

  I might understand

  why they call him a maverick

  when he is really just a horse

  a horse like me except with dark eyes

  terrible from his useless suffering

  When It’s Sunny They Push the Button

  and the sky

  through the oval aperture

  above your head in the form

  of light that bounces

  a little then rests on the walls

  and also in the form of whatever colors

  you can see and maybe

  if you’re lucky clouds

  pours through

  maybe it’s obvious

  and peacefully alien like a young nun

  walking past the local establishments

  in a university town in summer

  where it’s always despite the superficial changes

  the same time

  even the rain

  feels like rain after the evacuation

  and even happiness

  feels like having survived something

  I can’t remember

  Work

  This morning I rode my gray metal bike

  through the city throwing its trucks at me,

  sometimes along the narrow designated

  lanes with white painted symbolic bicyclists

  so close to the cars too close to my shoulders,

  and sometimes down alleys where people

  on piles of clothes lie sleeping or smoking

  or talking in the shade. Cars parked there

  have signs in their windows that the doors

  are unlocked and there is no radio.

  It is remarkable to me that downtown

  is always so remarkable to me. Every single

  time I feel so shiny mixing my intention

  with all the other lives, each so much

  more interesting and easy for me to imagine

  than the tourists muttering to each other

  over their maps in some garbled

  by traffic or wind foreign language I never

  quite hear. From my window the old

  brick factory building with its large white

  graceful letters seems to be actually

  proudly saying WILLIAM HENRY STEEL

  to the sky, the building floats, up and to

  the right but it’s the clouds of course

  that move. Or is it? The earth moves,

  farther off a squat little tower with three

  huge metal cylinders that must be

  for sending some invisible electric

  particles out into the city. I only feel

  free when I am working, that is writing

  this book about a pair of zombie detectives

  who painstakingly follow clues they think

  are hidden in an authentic tuscan cookbook.

  It is really more a sort of transcribing,

  every day I close my eyes and see

  them in an ancient yet modern high ceilinged

  earth-toned kitchen, laughing as they

  blunder through the recipes, each day

  a little closer towards the name of their killer

  whose face will soon to all of us be clear.

  They have a little zombie dog, I name him

  William Henry Steel, and this will be

  my great work time has brought me here to do.

  Lesser Heights Are Bathed in Blue

  I’m staring out the window at an aluminum shed.

  Periodically late March sun against its roof

  flashes just randomly enough not to be a message.

  A dog has wandered into the yard. He

  keeps crouching until his balls I presume

  touch the ice and he jumps and yelps.

  What I find hilarious shames me. I am

  house sitting. I am sitting in the house

  watching ESPN. Daisuke pronounced

  Dice K Matsuzaka throws a gyroball, very

  slowly it seems to but does not spin

  like a green dress on a mannequin in the sun.

  I grow hungry awaiting instructions.

  On television the cherry blossom festival

  has begun. Already the trees have started

  to bloom, along the edges their white

  leaves turn a slightly deathly darker red.

  Every spring amid the day we light

  a giant paper lantern the Japanese presented

  to us in 1951. Here I am hanging

  a black light bulb in an enormous desert for you.

  From what? People, I grew up a wonderful

  sullen boy close enough to the capitol

  building to dream of hitting it with a stick,

  but did not. Inside there’s an arch

  the exact color of the sky, under it anyone

  can stand and barely speak and all the way

  across the rotunda someone else can hear.

  Now it is known as the Millard Fillmore

  spot, but only to me. The world’s last

  remaining Whig, I lie on my back thinking

  we must defeat them, but later, after

  this final highlight. A giant foam finger

>   the color of a fabulous foreign lime appears.

  I put it on. Wildly I am cheering for nothing. So much

  for someone who doesn’t remember his dreams.

  Minnesota

  This blue vinyl couch

  you bought is winter sky color,

  blue but also a little white

  with cracks like the robin’s egg

  that fell onto the balcony.

  The railing is painted

  that green generally intended

  by the authorities to make you feel

  you are not even intentionally

  being punished. For weeks

  I did nothing but dream

  I was writing a letter

  to my younger self full

  of useless benevolent warnings.

  I wasn’t lonely, I was 22

  and knew lots of things

  I’ve now forgotten like how

  they made the great rivers in Siberia

  run backward, there’s a city

  called Ólafsfjörður where every

  winter hulls are left locked

  in ice so they do not rust,

  and what all of that had

  to do with me. Now on my back

  in Minnesota I am reading

  about phlox. The blue

  phlox is blue and can grow

  to such great heights it will

  no longer fit in any more poems.

  Unlike in the Young Drift Plains

  or southern tip of the Canadian Shield

  glaciers here did not as they

  melted deposit fertile soil,

  only boulders and stones. I see

  a squirrel I recognize. It’s so

  silent I can hear his onyx nails

  click on the frozen snow.

  He watches a tree until it moves.

  He has one main and an alternate nest,

  and lives with other squirrels

  in a temporary winter community

  called an aggregation. I hope