Originally posted 4/12/2010.

When we have crossed the last line
When we have left unhappy and can see happy
When our teeth stop traveling in search of substance

When we demand and no longer beg
When we are seen fully by another
When the sense of otherness is tamed

When learning is the equivalent of living
When it stops being a big deal
When work is jazz and not techno

When the lovers blow hot always hot
When the cool is demonstrated by a hand in a fire unburned
When warm clothes make the war go away

When street is asphalt and not adjective
When prairie takes precedence
When river is clean fuel

When ocean slips pregnancy to us through our eyes
When bird and snake combine to make historical marker
When tumbledown prisons become flower mounds

When the last butchers fall meatless into our arms
When mean mumbling is sampled and made to rock
When beauty is defined as “every face we see”

When this is all quaint
When no one needs to learn this at any emotional level
When this is so clear it is invisible

Then

Originally posted 3/17/2005.

Ghost, you call me. 
Not The Ghost, 
but Ghost, 

making that my proper name, 
not (of course) my Christian name, 
but the older kind:
the one that means something 
and tells something about you 
that remains true.
There’s nothing new 
about me being Ghost
except that now that I’m dead,
they call me that directly.

Back when I was just a guy,
long before I leaped off that bridge,
I used to daydream about flying
and walking through walls.
I wished for the power 
of invisibility, to blow unseen
so coldly and suddenly
into a space
that everyone in that room
would turn and look for me
and shudder when I wasn’t there.
I never had impact,
I didn’t want risk, 
so my fantasy became impact
without risk: that would be the life,
I thought. There’s a good joke:
I have the life I wanted
now that I don’t have a life.

I used to cringe
when they told scary stories at camp.
Later I laughed at horror films,
pretending bravery.
Once you’re here, you find
it’s nothing like those things.
It’s all so – routine.
You show up at regular times,
whistle a little in a dark hallway,
provide a moment of clarity to someone
who’s used to being safe and warm.
You become a lesson
no one believes they need
until it’s learned.

There are small joys here.
This is a beautiful world,
once you can no longer feel it.
It takes your breath away
to see the way it moves.
I spend years just standing
in front of the strangest things:
not sunsets or rainbows
but garbage trucks and fires
and drive-by victims.
Disposal has become
an art form to me
now that I’ve been disposed of.

I am Ghost, have always been Ghost,
and Ghost is what you call me now.
I’ll take it
the way I have always taken it:
with a bowed head.
Before, I would come when called
because I had no place to be
other than the place I was called to.
Nothing’s really changed:
I blow through, am unseen,
maybe I’ll be remembered
in your children’s dreams.
Maybe we’ll see each other
one night on the landing, where
you might call me Ghost,

or you might call me imaginary.

Either will do. 
I answer to both.