The Ghosts
Despite their official status ghosts do not retire or sign up for medicare The bigger than life ones quiver with vivacity in the cemeteries of novels and the tombs of movie palaces where at this very moment Jean Harlow is slinking like a panther in a dangerous negligee and Jimmy Stewart is stammering his way into the heart of a woman who has pulverized his bashful vocabulary. The city ones still ride trolley cars dunk sinkers in cups of Automat joe and hawk The Sun on bustling corners. Those closest to me, the conga line of relatives who were picked off one by one by not so Lucky cigarettes, the sandlot boys with their swat and swagger the bikini girls who lost their tops to a bottomless sea and after dark became women in fan cooled bedrooms Lit by mason jars full of fireflies are all still here like lightly dozing rose petals in keylocked diaries. As for the ghosts who continue to populate the civilization of my nightmare...