I have pictures of the empty room.
—Laura Moriarty The surplus was at gunpoint
(mid-range) so I took stock
in fear and adrenaline (wouldn’t
you?). Half of the reason is the
$1,000 phone bill (half yours)
which you left me after paying
for well over a year and giving
me absolutely no indication
that you’d stop doing so, cold,
that day you left and never
spoke with me again. Your
ghosts keep raising their ugly
heads. Only I know who they really
are. Right? Lately, just when I’m about
to be okay, about to be on my feet again,
about to wake up, as they say.... (Did
you ever leave? I’ve watched movies
aplenty about these things: Ghost
stories vanish, too, like the unlucky
number of them that vanished into
something much more terrifying than
retrospect - into nothing; into perform-
ance? Into a game during which I was dis-
qualified in its early stages, only nobody told me so I
happily participated until it had been over for decades.)....
The four circles that made a square that appeared on a
nearby garage door have sort of disappeared, and in
their place is now a triangle (a misdirection of anger?
angular tension?). Boy, would love a massage....
The show goes on, however, as it must. It must. The show.
I’ve generally encouraged such drama (yes, did you honestly think
that I didn’t know?) clutched onto intense belief systems only to
watch them dissipate like the Andromeda. The drama. The belief.
These things happen, I know them. But do ghosts know current
events, or even care? Donald Duck is now the Emperor
of the World Federation. It turns out that the
Federation were actually the bad guys all along. It’s
a world full of surprises even for an old man who seemed
to constantly catch them like falling chandeliers. The universe,
the galaxy, whatever: Bad Guys. It’s my existential crisis, my
value judgments, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist. And
this is not cinema. At least I don’t recollect that it is. But
I do remember the cinema. It was a place we went to escape.
The reality of it all is Star Wars. Every night slogging alongside
the melee, until morning, when I keep remembering to tell you this,
only to find out that I’ve forgotten. You. This. Also, cash, the
paper kind, that which we all relied upon, sometimes obsessively,
well, I’m not sure where this came from or why I’m even telling you,
but for some reason it amuses me. And reminds. Anyway,
it isn’t green anymore. I think I’ll take that spark of pleasure
ache asking you to guess what color it is now. Or. Well.
It turns out that the future was all mine, after all. Who on
earth would have been listening to that noise? Silence. How
appropriate in a world that’s mine, but yet one which I find
no place to grab into. Perhaps it’s perfect that you are naught
but spirit – and a spiritless naught at that.... Think for a moment.
Notice now the spit and slither of spiritless spirit. Do things
never work themselves out appropriately? If. Only. You were
not such a glorious and tricky vacuum of spirit. Black hole
tricky, I’d say. And while it always breaks my heart, the month
of October never looked quite as dashing as it does this year,
unlike the bully it (and certainly other times of year)
has been in distances past. I mean, relative to the
infamous eleven months, which, (from widening distances
. . . past) at worst only dourly come and go. What am I left
with? Oh, substance. Which I actually apologize for bringing
up. Even to you. Yes, I still think of unpaid for I’m sorry’s
and What can I do?’s. But you’re spirit, I’m flesh. That is that,
the meaninglessness of logic, of sense, and most certainly
of karma. These days we learn that even the lifeless, the immaterial,
are tortured. A gas chamber for ephemera? All of it. Unlike even you.
No magician as yet has brought any of it to life. So here we are
at the butt end of a very cold November. A humiliating reprieve.
What’s left of the pretense of joy, of respite? But you must
admit that we wore October well. Materially, that is. I might
venture to admit that it still looks good on me. Sorry. Maybe
that’s bitter, too. Looks can be deceiving, anyway, right?
There are many days that, for some, are neither holidays
nor birthdays. Favorite things. October, October, October...
BOO! Oh I hope I got you again. It always makes me remember
being bowled over with laughter. But I know that you are only
here (and never here) simply to remind me that the joke
is still on me. I know because I see only one of us. Bowled over.
