Ghost 9

Watching the trees wave- pools of liquid

Under the earth. Talking about the angel with the poor boy.

A circle storm rages in the lake.

By its side I cannot force myself to even dream.

Light- inhabiting poolsides- in my mouth.

The next dream knifed in- habit

Made me disown it.

The dream was magenta, close-knit

Of knives and teeth. Something hairless, bold-

A thing such as I had never dreamed before.

Ghost 8

Give me softly back old sorrows

Snatched from jaws of death.

Permit me to remember

Excuses, drear days of sixteen,

Banks, burns, and braes, afternoon bridges,

The warm girl at my side.

Let me see again, darkly, her grins and words,

Melting gently in the autumn air,

Curses in November to make me crave comfort

In lamplit halls, in yellow wallpaper,

When I snapped off the light and sunk into dreams,

Empty-handed, never knowing.

Let me kiss the phantom of old times,

Survey again cracked classrooms, empty chairs,

Where once, in joyless afternoons, we sat,

Only to leave for blue moons set outside

Penniless in the rigid sky.

I'll tear the teeth of death to win back to that sight!

I'll swear against time's armies, i'll submit

To any loss of sanity or will,

To feel again, the kiss of old fate,

The smell of perfume ever dear to me.

To touch again, the soft, betraying flesh,

And speak with life to life upset,

Before the arc of time all falls away,

And leaves me with a broken plate.

My words resound,

And echo back from empty walls.

The sound of stone on stone,

Of dust whispering to dust.

Ghost 7

The awkward banks of time...

I had left myself almost open to the old comicbooks,

The starlit nights when I was whole and youth was fair,

Ageless records that haunt me yet, remembrance.

Soft girl, hair midnight black, with lips lisping, roaming

Abroad, the broken autumn railway.

Evenings when I peered at the sky.

The old yellow bed, fat and sumptuous, creaking,

Me awkwardly exposed in bedsocks to life,

Skies outside, lamplight, all acknowledged earnestly,

But incompletely. Yet skectchpads of time,

Hopeless even now, unremembered, un-sought after,

Forgotten like the calendars of ancient days.

Days! When the weak sun would shine in the cold white window,

And I would lounge by the wall,

With radio, with enchantments, with sorrow never expressed,

Except in insomnia fears and unknown whispers,

Where I could recline, fall, and weep gladly,

Repeating "for myself, myself".

And the nights! O my lost comicbook nights!

Frozen under glass, half-remembered, incoherent,

Nights so pristine-pure, shamefully lost!

Night, night, with not a whisper in it,

Not a threat of the shadow to fall,

In whirpooled chambers left bare to the elements,

Under electric light,

Chanting magic formulas, sacrificing rudiments of

Love, ashamed.

Ghost 6

I conceived a great poem of the night. Among the clutter of comic-books, the light-slanted shade, the crumby carpets, the empty bed. I realised, significantly and triumphantly, over days and months, that I had lost something great. I had been living, not with knowledge of her, but with the exaggerated image of her beauty, a phantom looming large in my imagination but at the same time corrupted, despicably remote. It was a phantom I still expected to see outside, in the blue evening, from my bedroom window, traipsing listlessly across vacant lots and railway yards. I realized that the most affecting and valid word in all of our language is "loss". Loss of beauty, loss of love, loss of life. I watched it recede, day by day, hour by hour, and every day as the evening wore on I confronted it, examined it, let it affect me fully. And after all the sorrows and self-recriminations had worn away, I felt somehow alive, warmed, exalting in the death of love. And that word contained nothing now for me but loss, repeated a hundred times over, as my eyes looked forward, piercing the furthest extremities of the night.

I now saw it in terms of universal loss, loss intensified till it became acutely, exactly nothing. Loneliness is such an unbearably, oddly beautiful thing. And so, I turned my eyes again to her phantom, an image that had long ceased to bear any resemblance to reality, but was just that, a phantom, a last remembrance. Her face in my mind was turned away from me and deathly-white, her frozen black hair obscuring her mouth, but a mouth which would be screwed-up bitterly. In my imagination she always appeared in the evening, and was made of night, and was always remote, and was always alone, answering by her steps and sighs the beats of my heart.

Ghost 5

Alone in yellow-lit bedrooms, contemplating fat mattresses. Alone, breathing, half-awake, knowing sleep will come soon. Remembering, remembering... In my T-shirt under the duvet, weak at the remembrance, half-thrilling, half-despairing.

Switch on the delicate yellow lamp, or the bold bare bulb on the ceiling, wake up and be adult, alive in the brave life of the real world... Consider your loves rationally, like you've seen other men do. Conceal the depth of sadness that constitutes your emotional state, give yourself over again to dreams.

Alighting into dreams, give yourself again to the knowledge of real images spurned bitterly from real life, achingly remembered, visions, images, messages, things that actually occurred long ago in summer streets, where the sunlight slanted from concrete to concrete, now rained-on, now degraded, now unspeakable. Consider her in her porch like a roadside Madonna, stolidly encamped there, clutching her suitcase, surrounded by porticoes and railings, baroque embellishments of yellowed concrete as the sun glimpsed between buildings and lit where she stood, streamed down the street, got in the eyes of all the white transitory ghosts that glided by, glinted on the windows of angry cars racing downhill, reflected, slid away, faded again as the crowds dispersed, back to darkness again where all days return.

Struck by the memories of it, struck by my pink, frightened soul across the street, suddenly frozen into love but afraid to follow its lead.... I was saddened and glum in my bedroom.

Ghost 4

Imagine perfection lowered into earth, in silk skin, with no barriers or boundaries, but flawed, female, sulky, full of jokes! Imagine a latter-day Venus that could sit so solidly, with such an effervescent and mysterious beauty that it would take your breath away. How often have I dreamed in nights that I could see it again, her face, framed in brown hair that fell prettily in her eyes, her lips, her eyes a quiet blue. Her arms sturdy, her mouth laughing, her waist I yearned to grasp, slip an arm around. All that was beautiful in sixteen, all that was wicked, laughing, joyful, glooming and sad in a woman, in her, brought to life in her. She was a phantom that passes, she was the dream of beauty that disperses.

Wrapped in a uniform, in the quiet and commonplace uniforms of nineteen ninety one. A dark, blood-red jersey she would wear in lowering autumn afternoons, everything else black and comfortable. Outside, of course, the air bloomed, welcomed her, even the dark rainclouds wept, comforted her. The broiling smokes of autumn were her companion.

Her red lips, that spoke evil, that told jokes! Her brown hair and disgruntlement! Her sleeps in Sunday night silence. As she laughed like a débutante in the prefect's room, as she stalked, affronted, late for another class, through the corridors, loved and loving, sweet-lipped in sour glances.

I first saw her in the Modern Studies class, which was quiet and pastel-shaded with

it's Venetian blinds and sunlight slanting on the bare back wall. There were groups of brown school tables...

Ghost 3

I was in two minds... That marvellous girl, her fringe, her legs, her perfume, smiling at me, close beside me. She had silken brown shampoo-smelling hair sweeping down like a curtain, a red mouth and a vicious grin, a solid body full of dark-clothed promise, varnished nails, a quiet prettiness that sometimes turned aside in gloom.

We met, as usual, in the Art class, me hardly daring to believe my luck, desperate almost. One day she elected to sit beside me and I struggled to keep my heart from pounding as she quietly worked beside me. Ah, her dark brown hair, her blouse, her breasts beneath.

She was a popular girl in school, liked by boys and girls, outgoing, glamorous, sainted in my eyes. I didn't know much about her and was afraid to ask. As we began our conversations, our casual discourses on our likes and dislikes, I could barely restrain my sense of wonder that she would even stoop to talk to me. I hadn't, for any length of time, been so exposed to a girl in school and I let it go to my head, quietly, with a secret sense of rapture.

To me she was all the warmth of autumn embodied, everything pure, a Venus for cold nights. A sixteen-year-old, red-mouthed, in blue nights in the atmosphere of hometime. Her silken skin in bedrooms, her dark jokes. In school, with such dignity and grace, she carried a practical woven bag filled with her essays, everything non-serious and light. She cracked jokes with the teachers, chuckled disgracefully, but always with a drawing-back, an inner reserve, as she leant at stools with her soft skin, exuding a secret, unspeakable perfume.

All enacted in the empty atmosphere of nineteen-ninety one. She was left to empty suburban rooms and duvets, to the humour of streets and wallpapered rooms. Outside the bright yellow lamp-post burning all night long, while she swept about her brown hair, whispering secret joys to herself.