Ghost

- Poetry - 

​I wish I could compare myself
   to a ghost haunting a home
                                  a sanitorium
                                  a grave;
   that I’m some tortured
      wispy thing
      knowable only in fragments and pieces,
      by recording systems and cameras,
      by inexplicable chills and freezes.
 
Because it would be easier to say
   that I’m a spectral veil,
   that others experience my haunting
   in cackles
      in shinings
         in sightings.
 
It would be easier to say
   that I’m a half-thing
   – a troubled spirit –
   caught somewhere between
   whatever life and afterlife you please;
   that if I could only solve some riddle
      or find my purpose,
      I’d be released.
 
But when I encounter walls
   I can’t walk through them,
   and I don’t have the luxury
   of an ethereal plane to brood in.
 
No.
 
I am flesh
    and bone
      and blood
        and the bloody bits of home
        that burrow under my skin,
        that are wooden splinters
        and metal slivers
        migrating toward my corporeal heart.
        And if I don’t do something very real,
        they’ll surely tear me apart.
 
I am more likely
   to end up the meat on your plate,
   than some spooky phantom nonsense
   fanatics try to capture and chase
   to improve TV viewer rates.