Your Ghost Lights Me

I know that you do
In the afternoon
Under a warm blanket
Sun on the couch.

I feel it
Honey in my vertebrae
Pulled out of my flesh
Into ghost arms.

Ghost desire
Lights me.

I know that you do
In the afternoon
Alone, always.

I feel it

Chernobyl in my spine
Pulled away by ghost fingers.

Ghost mouth
Lights me.

Please don’t, please don’t,
If it is only this,
Only alone.

Love is a Sickness Flowing

Love is a sickness flowing
a river filled with women, filth, smiling children
a holy rite, once crossing the lip, spares you no fever
diphtheria, typhoid, cholera
the illness of the water wending
past distended bellies, combs of fingers,
fragile lanterns floating, candles adrift,
mouths that open for ashes, silt, refuse
laughing splashing cartwheels in the air and then crash!
Love is the Ganges, the Yamuna, the Jordan,
like milk, you thirst for only this,
and only this waits for you,
beautiful and poisoned.

Smoke and Scotch

I thought of you first.
I wonder if you know that,
years ago, your melancholy
fedora, cigarettes wreathing
the rim of your hat
a traveler stopping at stones,
roses for strangers,
something I understand.

I thought of you before
embers caught my name
and took me dancing
burned the bones
and left me hollow,
I watched you at the crossroads
leaving smoke and scotch
something I observed quietly.

Like a cat watching a house
deciding if she wants to come in.

I think of you still
silver hair and silent
the man in the hat
at two roads that cross
but once and never again,
praying the words
outlast the smoke,
something I understand.

Image: Astro_Alex, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons