Scott Ferry
to the ghosts
i can’t decide if you are here to stop time or re-enter time
why would you want to stay here as a cold dance in a hallway
a rattle in between rafters a sour lavender stain on the still wind?
there is no skin that can house you yet you have eyes which can
laser through drywall you have a voice which can sweep up a piano
through a sigh you have tentacles which drape a longing
over your mesh-pocked ribs over your mist-apron through your tinkling
crystal keys i have felt you looking at me a sad grappling for linear time
a grasping for a pulsebeat and a metronome breath
i don’t have a body to spare i have a shouting prison of ache and sex
i have a moving puppet of meat and juice i have three soft beings
to shield from death and you are already sold to the river
so i can’t understand why you can’t dive right in to the orgasm
orchestra behind you where god and your dead family wait for you
with all medicines and all equations and all words erupting into
peace why why are you hanging a rusted nail into this ramshackle
rot palace where we literally decay as we walk as time siphons out
our essence in a trickle of golden blood? please turn around and step
into the timeless field where everything flies outward while collapsing
please return where someone loves you because love is not common
here and i only have enough for this brittle carton of prayers
in my hands
it doesn’t take long to be sinking again
with the objects as chloroform biscuits and the sweat of august
pooling in the black fruit along the vines / i thought i had described
the way layers of sound and space and time peel off and each
incarnation carries a bit less flesh more longnozzled and soporific
/ i thought i had described the way the realities can be peeled off
and the glue between sound and space and time ribbons like rainbow soap
so when i get to the last layer without matter without hearts clicking
seconds without places to judge against echoes there is just a light
which bends and blends into the sky like a cottonwomb / i thought
you had understood it but you hadn’t because when the buildings
are ghosts you can still talk and all i do is weep because god is a cruel
child
Scott Ferry helps our Veterans heal as a RN in the Seattle area. His most recent book, The Long Blade of Days Ahead, is available from Impspired Press. More of his work can be found at ferrypoetry.com.