Ghost in the Machine
Little ghosts in the house
the colors of dust.
Not terrifying or incredible.
At night, settling on eyelids,
icing the gaps between lips,
working with wax to close ears.
They play echo
against skull walls.
They speak electricity.
In the morning, ghosts forget
themselves, and we were never there
to care.
In the living
moment, the dead are behind wallpaper,
trying to peel away, growing
in the attic, trapped in fiberglass.
Ten years before me, the cinnamon colored cat found its way down a passage in our basement. Somehow he died in an empty room behind a boiler. My dad and I played ping-pong in the adjacent room and I stared down the mouth of that passage. Some places house nothing but the dust.
In sleep, ghosts make friends
with dreams. Across corpus
callosum, depthless chasm,
in between axon lines,
fingers of mind
build a bridge behind time.
It is impossible to dream–
clean house.
One way or another, every person dies in their sleep.