bronze-green face of confucius
on the bedroom wall,
pictures of hendrix and lester young,
a gold rabbit frame and a gargoyle figurine,
a bali dragon and an ireland whistle.
this is the desk where i’m supposed to work.
it’s so crowded nothing happens here —

so i go to the porch
because on the porch there’s an ashtray
dumped once every couple of days
and a pair of chairs set up knee to knee
where the laptop can sit, where the notebook can sit
while the work goes on and on.

these days
it’s all about the nosiness
and the neighbors and the trees
and whiffs of dope from downstairs
and the ghost in the kitchen
that never comes out here
but is audible from every other
place in the apartment.

who was the ghost before
it was a ghost? the ashtray
is full of them, the face on the wall
might be one, the neighbors
don’t stay around long enough
to prove whether or not
they’re ghosts themselves.

this ghost rattles the pans
and runs across the linoleum to tattle
on something that happened a long time ago,
and the doors swing open and shut without any of us
touching them. the neighbors swing open and shut
without anyone touching them, either,
or so it seems from the porch

where the ghost never comes, where the things
that ought to get done never get done, where the smoking
is good and the sitting is easy. i’d let the ghost open and shut
my notebook if that was possible. let the ghost worry about
the clutter in the room. let the ghost make sense
of the miscues and odd placements. let the ghost
take over my life, put it in better hands,

the type of hands
that can pass though walls.