Come on All You Ghosts Read online

  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 Handwriting

  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

  Come On All You Ghosts

  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.

&nb
sp; 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.

  About the Author

  Matthew Zapruder is the author of two previous collections of poetry, American Linden (Tupelo Press, 2002) and The Pajamaist (Copper Canyon Press, 2006). The Pajamaist was selected by Tony Hoagland as the winner of the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America, and was chosen by Library Journal as one of the top ten poetry volumes of 2006. He is also co-translator from Romanian, with historian Radu Ioanid, of Secret Weapon: Selected Late Poems of Eugen Jebeleanu (Coffee House Press, 2008). German and Slovene-language editions of his poems have been published by Lux-books and Šerpa Editions; in 2009, Luxbooks also published a separate German-language graphic-novel version of the poem “The Pajamaist.” A collaborative book with painter Chris Uphues, For You in Full Bloom, was published by Pilot Books in 2009. His work has appeared in many anthologies, including Third Rail: The Poetry of Rock and Roll; Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century; Seriously Funny: Poems about Love, Death, Religion, Art, Politics, Sex, and Everything; and The Best American Poetry 2009.