something about the holy ghost

other implications of divinity:
the sensation of a very hot shower
on a mosquito bite.

my house is creaking

she says, "do you believe in ghosts?"

he tells her he likes the idea. that it is something that interests him, but something he sort of left in a box.

"in a box?"

"in a box. when i was in kindergarten i was convinced of ghosts. i had elaborate dreams about them. not so much looking like dead people, but how they would be in cartoons. floating sheets. sometimes they were good. sometimes they were completely evil. usually you could tell by the mouth, if it was frowning or smiling or had pointy teeth. those were vampires, i think. but often and a lot at the end, you couldn't tell a good ghost from an evil ghost. there were no longer any real distinguishing marks between good and evil. it was weird."

"so you're saying you don't believe in ghosts?"

"i'm saying it doesn't matter if it's real. i'm saying the thought is absorbing and fantastic. that i saw a painting once that was just the words 'to repel ghosts' in white, printed on black. that this was incredibly affecting. but that most of my convictions about this sit in a box somewhere in my parents house. with the enthusiasm award i got in kindergarten."

"i can't imagine you in kindergarten."

"i didn't have glasses and i remembered things better. short term things, anyway. i didn't have a habit of wandering into a room and forgetting why i was there."

"i believe in ghosts," she says. she looks straight ahead. or just off in the distance. somewhere near the windows.

in the bed, sitting up, the thunder crashes. he holds her to him. he feels her breasts through her shirt, rising and falling with her breath. they are just big enough to fit in the palm of his hand.

"i believe in ghosts," she says, this time letting her eyes close a bit. "in something. something involving physics, and a soul. there is obviously science behind it. there are no sheets involved."

"there should be, ada. there should be sheets."

"my ghosts are not the product of your childhood."

"i had a wonderful childhood."

"allen, when i woke up it was because i had this dream. about a camel. or, there was a camel. and it was trying to get out of this gate that i couldn't get open. and so it stretched its legs sideways, like a spider, because it had to get out. the grass was burning. it was an estate or something, and it had grass. i had been hiding in the house, and everyone i was hiding with just ran through the fire. because they were scared of something."

"were you scared, ada?"

"i don't know. i woke up so i could figure it out. but i still don't know." she pauses, and takes a deep breath. "once when i was driving at night, there was a storm. i was near a telephone pole, and i couldn't see through the rain, which was a curtain. and a deer jumped out, right into the windshield, and its head went through. sometimes i dream about this still."

"Ada," allen starts, "if you listen, you can hear everything moving. the rain outside and the clouds up ahead. the stars up above that are really so many low flying jets. the ice cubes turning into ice. the fact that i am still hungry. you can break these things down into smaller parts. and find out what is creaking."

"the creaking woke me up."

"i know."

"there could have been a porch swing. in the dream. it was an estate."

"this is a fair assumption, i think."

"you're just saying that to be supportive."

"yes."

"what were your ghosts really like?"

"round sheets. that floated in a black void. they smiled and frowned and had full sets of teeth or pointed teeth or no teeth."

"the longer you got to know them the harder it was to see which one was obviously good and which one was obviously evil?"

"i think."

"were they dead people?"

"they were just ghosts."

"Allen?" Ada goes, "I want to go to sleep."

they went to tell everybody but they could not get across

He’s watching a Korean movie about a sea monster in a mutated irradiated river full of run off and nobody can stop thinking about fishing in the Schuykill. She sends him a text message and he tells her he’s watching a movie but he’d be glad to bother her when it was done. She says sure. He tells her it won’t be done until late, and she tells him she doesn’t care. He can bother her whenever he wants, really. He grins his face off and everyone says “Well who’re you texting there???” He continues to grin and points at the screen so no one missed the monster slapping the guy who’s probably half retarded into a hole where he goes unconscious. Everyone is glad because he was an irresponsible father. Not a bad one. Just probably retarded. And a burden.

He walks home and everything is covered in frost. The streetlights throw shadows around and the trees have no leaves. Just branches that stretch, for different reasons. And the lights are yellow and the shadows are just dark, and all the buildings are made of bricks.

“It’s fucking cold out.”

“Jesus. Allen. What time is it?”

“2? 2:05? Probably. One of those.”

“Mm.”

“You were sleeping.”

“Sure. Maybe.”

“Well, since I’ve got you up.”

“How was the movie?” She closes her eyes, stretches her arms. Turns her head to the side.

“The end was great. Everyone was dead. The retarded guy wasn’t retarded anymore, and he and this kid he managed to save lived in a shack they built on the edge of the river, and it was winter, and they were warm. As the kid fell asleep, the dad, the guy who wasn’t really retarded anymore, he knelt by the window with a rifle, and watched. There was a deer somewhere. It was fucking beautiful.”

“You’re kind of a sap sometimes. You know that right?”

“Eat shit, it was still fucking beautiful. Fuck. It’s colder now than it was at 9.”

“I said that to you months ago.”

“It was good, so I kept it. I’m almost home. It is going to be warm. It will be great.”

“It’s cold in here. I have to use like three down comforters. And then I have to use a fan on my face. Or stick my feet out from under.”

“Aren’t you sleeping in like, the sunroom of your parents house.”

“Yes.”

“Because you like to go home on weekends.”

“Because I go home on weekends.”

“Fair enough.”

“It is.”

“Sure.”

“”

“So next week, let’s hang out.”

“Why? Because you think you can change my feelings about the male gender?”

“Because I think it’s cute that you like to refer to the male gender as the male gender. If you give me a minute, I am going to throw the phone down and take my pants off and get into bed, and then keep going.”

“Are you going to make sound effects when you take your pants off again?”

“Yes. They are my ninja sounds. They are adorable.”

“They’re fucking creepy Allen. It is creepy that you make sound effects when you take off your pants.”

“Hey so tell me about your first kiss.”

“Go make your fucking ninja sounds.”

“Fine.” He does.

“I am back.”

“His name was Namon. Which is a weird name, I guess. I don’t know. I never met anyone else named Namon. I was like 2. Or 3. We were probably infatuated with each other. We played Peter Pan a lot. I tried to fly off of his bed. Tinkerbell was not real and so I landed on the ground, in pain and shocked that it did not work. It was awful. He kissed me. Now he is fat and hairy. Like on his back. I saw it once.”

“My brother did that. He was like 4 maybe. He thought he was Superman. He jumped off a slide and he fell and broke his wrist. These are things Superman never would have done. I did a drawing of Superman telling him to get better when he got back from the hospital.”

“Allen, I am going to go to sleep.”

“Come hang out next weekend.”

“Sure. Maybe. I don’t know. Things with me and boys don’t work out always. Someone always gets weird. We’ll see.”

“Well. Still. Sweet dreams, Ada.”

“Goodnight, Allen.”

*****

later, they planted their feet
in water.
she turned to him, and said “i won’t run far”

he lobbed a coconut into her hair
like a baby monitor.

the sun set and put the ocean on fire.
he was worried for her safety.

he held a coconut to his mouth
hoping it was god’s ear.

certain things square off
at a great distance,
somewhere something is crying.

it is most likely a seagull.

‘marilyn,’ he told the coconut,
‘tonight there will be bingo.
promptly at 7.’

****

sitting in that hospital bed, with the gauzy drapes
and the sound of the sea,
he thought about all those good intentions
with which he’d set about.

marilyn found god in the coconut trees.

john fitzgerald kennedy rewrote the new testament
on the pages of a tv guide.

he saw the face of our father in the best of intentions
in the morning erection
the fire bombing of dresden
the 52% chance of marital failure
the advent of astro-turf
and all the other things
we find to be beyond our control.

***

years ago in dallas, texas lee harvey oswald
perched in a book depository window
waiting.

across the lawn was lyndon baines johnson,
vice-president,
patriot,
marksman.

crouching in the hot sun.

when the squib went off,
kennedy held his breath
for three days.

jackie was inconsolable.
ladybird brought her a new pink hat
like a miniature pillbox.

later, he woke up in a small villa
somewhere in south america
and marilyn monroe got away as soon as she could.

**

the names have come back
they are nipping at my heels
like how once a mama hen gets a taste of her own eggs
they’re all she’ll eat.

there are celebrities dying everywhere in hotel beds.
i wonder if any of them are planning on joining JFK.

unless no one told them.

*

what lead us here?
gps & text messages.
google maps & wikipedia.

i drop names like there’s a hole in my pocket full of names.

i’ve heard tell of a youth movement in the north
that may have moved so far in that direction
that it is now south.

they are camping out in book depositories
and have seen the face of the father
in the space between radio stations.

this is not an indictment,
this is reporting.

i have a full set of teeth, i have health insurance

it's the middle of january.
out my window it’s raining.
everything seems like those old kiddie pools
with the whale in the middle, raining water on your head.
i do realize i just used rain twice, as a metaphor for itself.
if you were here
and not on a train,
you would have pointed this out to me.

some other time maybe:
as i lay in bed
you sit up, resting on one arm.
i think about all the bras
that have lied to me.

new year's eve

to take my mind off things i went to a party
where, i figured, there would be plenty of ice.

there was, and also a sea of rum
in a large ceramic mixing bowl.
which i couldn’t manage to drink.
it was something about the molasses
or the guy standing next to the bowl
stabbing one of those wind-up alarm clocks
repeatedly.

then i met a man who claimed he was his identical twin
but changed the subject when I pressed him
for proper documentation.

i found my way into a room
marked ‘7 minutes in hevn’
where everyone was on their hands and feet
walking sideways
like crabs.

later, while climbing the stairs
for the same reason people climb mountains
she came up from behind,
close, and associated
with very few words.

we stood on the roof and surveyed all the buildings
with incomplete tops
and elaborate lighting displays
about dreidels
and the night all the first-born sons got lost.

i said to her
you should know,
i am the kind of guy who answers the phone on the first ring
sixty percent of the time.
and, more often than not,
i wake up with an erection
regardless of what i have been dreaming of.

she asked me why no one thought
to make pancakes,
and i had no immediate answer for her.

the lone ranger and tonto arrive in grim fandango on a saturday afternoon

the lone ranger and tonto went riding off
somewhere into the united states
shouting i shall be free
like it meant something
which it did.

a year later they landed somewhere outside juarez
in a town where everybody was a skeleton
made out of bones
and tango music was played everywhere
with plenty of accordions.

the lone ranger couldn’t stay, he explained
he had to go and fix everybody’s problems.
tonto stayed behind.
he formed a loving relationship with an insurance adjuster
who didn’t find his flesh and blood unattractive.
far from it.
tonto thought he’d found his childhood dog,
and they kept it as a pet.

one night at a party
where everybody was drinking
and there was an especially good accordion player
tonto asked his lover where all the liquor went
when he drank it up.
his lover took him outside,
gently, by the arm
and told him that he loved him very much
but that this wasn’t something he should ask again.
tonto kissed the insurance adjuster on his cheekbone
and they went back to the party.

still at the end of every hard earned day people find some reasons to believe

Now, it's not as if the polar bears came from nowhere. Heaven knows we have science to tell us all about it. They were always there and they were always around and everyone assumed we all knew our own places (except of course in the zoo, but really, as long as we both willfully believed that things were as they should be then they were, because that is how it works here) and everything knew its place in the world until they didn't anymore and then panic sets in. There are bulletins on the evening news. And pop-up ads. Your inbox is flooded with notices to save the panda bears, which is very confusing since there is a polar bear invasion and you wonder maybe they got it wrong. Maybe they're human after all. And you open it up, and there it is, that small cock you never really believed you had, but maybe it was. And here was your chance.

in another life your mother and I were brothers

we woke up and shaved together
for hours.

once the sink was clogged
with the crumpled up paper dixie cup
your mother, my brother,
used for spitting.

your mother fixed it with a stare
and nothing was ever the same.

dear pot you too are black love kettle

we planted the seeds in the back yard
and waited for the mirror crops to show up
because that’s what it said on the packet.

we planned on selling the harvest to ikea
or possibly kmart.

someone lit a cigarette
and we camped out on the porch
our eyes to the horizon
and drinking until we could see
through the fences
and into peoples yards
and bedrooms
and television sets.

someone said ‘a watched pot never boils’
and we murdered them with a sound
and something heavy and dark
and used their body as a fertilizer
for our mirror crops
whose yield
would help prom queens,
ballerinas,
future movie stars
and men whose guts are so large
that they have not seen their penises in years.

like two ice cubes in a jam jar

he took so many amphetamines
that he had to go to bed.
he was stark naked
and buried six feet deep
in down comforters.
the next time I saw him, he was removing a ghost
from an old woman’s fingers
using his tongue.
it looked like spun cellophane
and had the air of a county fair.
they were outside of a bar
on the sidewalk
she was sitting in a wrought iron chair
and he had risen to his feet,
and was blocking the sun from his eyes
using only his hand.

he told her ghost
‘as long as I have teeth I will bite you
and when I no longer have teeth I will gum you
and I will pound at you with my fists
and knock your face in with my boots
which are heavy, and black.’
and then he did.

christmas movies (I used to complain, now I don't.)

there is a grown man in a bar
telling anyone who will listen
that he has love to give.
luckily, he has been drinking.

there is a gorilla sitting in a cage
completely alone
and weeping
and masturbating, furiously.
some parents turn their children way,
covering their eyes.

once two complete strangers
shot each other in the face.

I am setting the table,
things are simmering,

I am teaching myself a trick with scissors,

there is the possibility that it will snow tomorrow.

according to what

they sat down together in lawn chairs
while small children threw rocks at each other.

he said to her
'I dreamed about a bear in a hotel corridor
and I don’t know why.'

she said she dreamed a man
reached into his hip pocket
and pulled out a speech that read
‘so happy to be here.’

when she told him
‘there is something about lullabies
that keeps me up at night,’
he felt the way a just-tuned violin sounds,
and watched as one child
ran headfirst at another
from a great distance.