My Life As A Ghost

I learned to swim in Wisconsin. It was the 50s, and everything glittered under the rigid guise of a false prosperity. It’s a lot different now. Nothing glitters. The United States, grinning ear to ear like a Times Square con man, has walked away with everyone’s dream. And left us with a simulacrum. Freedom on a layaway plan extending endlessly into a nonexistent settlement. Eternity in a can. Why does deviancy so often feel like salvation? Is this wrong? Hallucinations aren’t dreams, they’re more like destinations. The 60s is a lonely place to be in 2026.  Regrets prowl the parameters, taunting us with scruples, blasting us with salutes. Have you ever tried bending a spoon with your mind? I tried it once, and it turned into a fork.  

Clouds are structural: the variables they elicit are round. Therefore, never count your mittens before they linger. If I crashed through a mirror, would I enter the domain of my other self? Or would I find myself looking back at myself with the same lost look? Splotches and blots always have something intriguing in their disarray. I’ve learned to respect the accidental. Anything inscrutable, yet obvious as a mouth. When I think of structure, I think of a pitcher and bowl on a North Dakota farm. I think of the silhouette, at sunset, of a deserted house. A sad image. One of the saddest. And I never got the real story. Where those people went.

I flourish most when I’m doing the least. The rest of the time, I diversify. I like the anonymity of the savannah. It’s where I can walk with cheetahs to the beginning of existence. This is the stepladder at its incidental best. I rise, and touch the ceiling with my brush, trailing the off-white chatter of cherubs. Such are my diversions. Here’s my idea of a paradigm: we build muscle together, we slather together. And by studying the subtleties of linen, I can warm my words in their hypothesis. 

The rattlesnake redefines wildness each time it coils and flickers its tongue. I remember when poetry mimicked the imposition of life with a clash of cymbals. And people politely listened, as they do now, but it’s different, and considerate, and nobody understands my hill. Outside the resistance, the harmonica is a romance. Inside, where it counts, the harmonica is sly, and cognac, and opens like an umbrella. Which is supposed to be bad luck. But I don’t think so. I love umbrellas, they’re like portable houses. And in defiance of rain, I learn to love the rain.

Feeling what I feel about aluminum, I have to ask: what has robbed us of our falsetto? What’s happened, indeed, to the entire chorus? Did you know the Supreme Court is across the street from the Folger Shakespeare Library? I don’t know whether to think of that as a latent defect, or just plain ironic. I see a voyeur that sees me. Sometimes I spy on my own life. Just because your feathers are a little ruffled, it doesn’t mean you can’t fly. Today’s question was: what have you noticed recently? There’s light in the bedroom in late afternoon. The Cascades are eerily bald. And I’m a lot clumsier than normal. Maybe because I do everything now at the speed of sleep. And when I put down in writing everything that bounces around in my head, the feelings I get about cardboard get really French. I’ll say this: consciousness is never monotonous. It’s not the same as holding meat over a fire. It’s more like feeling haunted by the ghost of yourself.