Of Ought and Can

Let's put a sensor on his brain and get some data. There'll be a bunch of graphs an' pictures of diff'rent colored lines corr'spondin' to every little thought he has. An' then let some fella say what that neon spaghetti means. An' that fella'll tell us that the sensor-brain'd man's got the ability to decide to chew the legs off a cricket or stomp a hole through a cat. An' sure enough, when we get roun' to it, the fella in the lab coat's gonna let y'all know that it's alright to slip a knife to your neighbor's throat just 'cause you can.

Final Product

Remember her; how she
Eased from the rambler's threshold,
Her arms knowing how to speak,
Like vines proclaiming "Hello."
Effortlessly. Her hands
you noticed. The creases.
Paths of a unique map.
To guide you.
Or to be perfect.

And, later, when her last
Breath spread out among the tubes,
Her body discovering how to die,
Like rock learning to swim.
Suddenly. Her hands
You noticed. The patterns.
Rhythms of a distant song.
To soothe you.
Or to be perfect.

Lying there, at the end,
Heavy with unfinished love,
No superstitious gift of eternal mystery
Outweighed her resting hands. You noticed.
In their cracks are the journeys.
In their folds are the sounds.
They will always be perfect.
[And unfinished from here.]

Work in Progress

I been tossin' around this idea for a piece 'bout my Aunt's funeral service an' how it didn't measure up. Someone described it to me recently as bein' the equivalent of pluggin' a few individual facts into a eulogy generator and clickin' a button. Maybe that ol' preacher didn't have the luxury of time. So here's where I'm at so far after one round of writin' and one round of shreddin':


Now that's a good lookin' page even if it's full of stupid ideas.

I'll Teach You a Lesson

When a whiskey sun comes up it's gonna be a longer day than most.
I'm lookin' right into him.
My breath, eaten by a bleedin' hole in the sky.
Spittin' jet fuel on a bonfire.
Like that sassy gal told me, "You look long enough and you're gonna start to like what you see."
She never was in the lesson business.

Sick On It

They all been apparitions
Every one of 'em.
An' I loved 'em all.
It ain't really much a surprise neither.
Might be the only way somethin' don' really exist sneaks up on a man an' don' surprise him.
Never really snuck on me though, have'ta say.
They was apparitions cause I made 'em that way.
Graftin' onto 'em an image.
An' they all made up jes enough of it that I kep' settin' juice into the projector.

Like the lass I wrote storybooks on when I was a young'un.
Sometimes thinkin' will could 'liminate the world borne out by evidence.
Like Daza an' Arita without a yellow flag to fly.

An' that one with the twisted hair an' bony hips.
Where the ticks jes weren't far enough along...
No phantom could match her mimic, but I stared straight through both.

An' my creation on the brink of reality.
At the stage of an oil paintin' when all that exists is a beautiful an' terrible mystery.
An' an artist too terrified to look directly at the model.

An' you too.

An' you too.

Theo-rising

Been awhile.

Friend a'mine got me to thinkin' of this theory I use'ta tell people 'bout when it suited my purpose to have 'em think I was a little off. Didn' never work too well though because my general appearance was prolly resposible for the passersby assumin' I were'nt all there.

I s'pose you can't rightly call it a theory after all; perhaps it's better termed a musing. Ain't no way to test the hypothesis y'see. An' I'm fairly sure it weren't never accurate to boot. Come to think of it, I never did believe it to be true 'tal.

Slammed Doors
Slammed doors was a mighty prollem for a big sum'bitch who gets a lil scary time to time. I been known to holler out like a high pitch'd creak in the floor when that old sound sneaks up on me. But a man's gotta convince his peers that he's a reason for jumpin out his seat and drawin' breaths like he was on death's door ever'time a door would shut hard. So I started to thinkin' it would be somethin' wicked if God'd made us so that whenever a door got to slammin' a man'd die jes a lil cause he lost some of them limited number'a heartbeats we was set out to have. An' boy I felt like I was dyin'. Gave me one powerful excuse when somebody'd hear me belt out a rusty hinge squeal ever' time the door would shut. An' jes thinkin' about that little "theory" made the prollem worse. I'd get to scarin' whenever I heard any sort of thud. Ev'ry noise was a gunshot. My ol' heart was gettin' used up somethin' quick. An' I weren't no three-footer when I conjur'd this one up neither. A full-grown man givin' time back on a fancy excuse.

But I Got History
I gotta history of this sorta thing. Started fearin' the end before I'd even got ta startin'. Early on as my dayschool times I come up with the idea that I weren't who I thought I was. These colorless devils were livin' under the bed in my parent's house, y'see. Comin' up through the floor soon as I'd pass into that dream state. They switched out my body with a robot ever'night. Sum'bitch looked like me. Acted like me. Sounded like me. Et cet'ra. An' them little bastards were clever too. 'Cause they programmed that robot to wonder if he was really a robot or not. Tricked that sum'bitch into not knowin' if he was me or him. An' where'n hell was I? I could'a been anywhere. Hell, they turn't me into a robot that looked like me an' acted like me but were'nt sure it was a robot or somethin' else.

An' then I did some research into them early years of when I come back. (A ghost has to grow up again when he comes back y'see.) I figured out where the robot scare comes from. It's all 'cause I watched this story called The Last Starfighter on the movin' picture box. Poor sum'bitch got hisself pick't up by some outerspace demons an' dragged out into the stars by a flyin' motor vehicle. Well, them outerspace demons replaced that sum'bitch Alex Rogan with a robot so his family were'nt to know he'd gone missin'.

I Got Me a Plan
If them colorless devils come back again though, this ole sum'bitch has a plan. I'm gonna slam doors on them bastards 'til they leave or I die.

How'ta Take a Fall

"I fell outta my bed"
"Sounds like a tough way to wake up, Ghost."
"Well I s'pose you could say that if'n I'd actually 'woke"
"How's that?"
"Well, the last time I took a 6-foot drop like that they kicked a stool from 'neath my feet and stretched my neck. So I guess, historically speakin', I'm accustomed to takin' a spill an' sort of sleepin' through the aftermath. It's a strange thing "wakin' up" with the ceilin' further 'way than you're use'ta seein' it, an' spectin' that the headache you got is connected to the fact you went pirate style roun' a bottle of rum with your 'quaintances."
"So you didn't get that cut above your eye or that bruise on your ass from a knife fight or being hit by a car?"
"Naw. This was a bona fide retribution for accusin' the lord of payin' no attention when I suggest that he place his han' on somebody what's misbehaved."
"Serves you right."