deepundergroundpoetry.com
I Must Barter with My Ghosts
The business and bother
of my fingers are unlike those
of other people, they do not
wait for me in the office.
They are my ghosts: the unformed
the pending and the unshaped,
and they haunt so, begging closure,
“Halá, I am nowhere with this.”
The worry about the year
sidles up on the sofa and watches
as I have my first mug of coffee,
a quiet behemoth regarding me,
The advertising idea for children
needing stents is a wraith seated
in the front seat of the car,
doll's eyes on me, eyes asking,
‘why are you not writing?’
The other specter, a campaign
still amorphous, I find her lying
beside me in the morning,
on her side and facing me
with urgent eyes, urgent
and earlier than the early birds
rattling metal roofing
nervous as they spin their heads.
In the kitchen they watch me,
trapped in days and dreams, they reek
so they cannot be unminded,
how the pungent yearn for burial.
Ghosts cannot tell weekend
from workday, I remind myself
that it is best not to mind them,
and, instead of worrying, work.
of my fingers are unlike those
of other people, they do not
wait for me in the office.
They are my ghosts: the unformed
the pending and the unshaped,
and they haunt so, begging closure,
“Halá, I am nowhere with this.”
The worry about the year
sidles up on the sofa and watches
as I have my first mug of coffee,
a quiet behemoth regarding me,
The advertising idea for children
needing stents is a wraith seated
in the front seat of the car,
doll's eyes on me, eyes asking,
‘why are you not writing?’
The other specter, a campaign
still amorphous, I find her lying
beside me in the morning,
on her side and facing me
with urgent eyes, urgent
and earlier than the early birds
rattling metal roofing
nervous as they spin their heads.
In the kitchen they watch me,
trapped in days and dreams, they reek
so they cannot be unminded,
how the pungent yearn for burial.
Ghosts cannot tell weekend
from workday, I remind myself
that it is best not to mind them,
and, instead of worrying, work.
Published 8th Nov 2022
| Edited 9th Nov 2022
Author's Note
Photo by Aimee Vogelsang via Unsplash
All writing remains the property of the author. Don't use it for any purpose without their permission.
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comments 4
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The author encourages honest critique.
Anonymous
9th Nov 2022 1:15am
i love you Spook. It's Okay.
24th Nov 2022 6:23pm
Ty again for sharing yet another glimpse of you as working poet. I sit here with the unmade bed staring at me and it’s 1:11 in the afternoon.
This poem took me on a wild memory ride all the way back to Honolulu, 1986. Japanese Shizuoko and I sitting there, stratospherically high, looking at a ton of t-shirts that needed folding.
She said, They’re staring at me. Accusing me.
If memory serves, we covered them with a blanket and solemnly promised to do them tomorrow. Heh.
This is the lover whose best friend had flown from Yokohama to California to hang with Bukowski.
Love it!
This poem took me on a wild memory ride all the way back to Honolulu, 1986. Japanese Shizuoko and I sitting there, stratospherically high, looking at a ton of t-shirts that needed folding.
She said, They’re staring at me. Accusing me.
If memory serves, we covered them with a blanket and solemnly promised to do them tomorrow. Heh.
This is the lover whose best friend had flown from Yokohama to California to hang with Bukowski.
Love it!
24th Nov 2022 9:40pm
“We covered them with a blanket”.
Solved in the swift style of Alexander the Great when he was faced with the Gordian Knot!
Solved in the swift style of Alexander the Great when he was faced with the Gordian Knot!
24th Nov 2022 11:48pm
