I dedicate most Tuesdays to ghosts,
they deserve at least one day of devotion.
I go to the park to admire their greyness,
amongst the green expanse of garden grass,
the ominous specter of their malevolence,
grinds my tongue like pebbles in the salad.
And the ghosts of things that have never been
grin with satisfaction because my stutter
gives them life, brief but concrete, the type
of life, they relish when they creep out of
the smoggy fogginess of their tombstones.
They have become accustomed to my visits
camouflaged amongst the chirping sparrows,
they leap like phantoms at the opera,
and pounced on me like tigers last Tuesday,
in premeditated unison, they chorused:
“You live in the world of immaterial ghosts
it’s the living that should scare you shitless”.
I shuddered as the choir melted back to wings
of my friends, those vagabonds, the sparrows
who also chillingly chirped in cheeky arias:
“There is more to ghosts than you think
Dear Perry, even the pub you treasure
Is filled with the magnificence of ghosts
that only true cowards cannot face
because they worship fear.”
Annoyed with the lecture I regressed
saw ghosts in the laughter of rainbow children,
hovering as gay balloons that may one day float,
become vampires chasing lunch with frosted hands
ready to devour little green salads in the park.
Perhaps its mankind’s schizophrenia talking to me,
or the voice of sickened sycophantic cowards,
which I have now put aside for good. Now sure,
ghosts are reverend figures due a lot of awe,
humanity carves them out of thin air or grows them
out of the immense grasslands where they buried,
tomes and tomes of library books, ready to
be read by the desire to create more ghosts
through the simple act of reading scary stories
leaping out the immense graveyards
of haunting dreams.
