Last Night With Ghosts

Last night

with ghosts I watched

an old porno

and a woman's side view of her face

sticking out

her tongue

--but from the corner of my bleary eye,

ghosts tramp across the garage;

translucent and sing-song witchery

or jump-rope speak words,

as I head into the main house

--and Grandma is there

lying in the crack of the bed a corpse

and I shake

her

and rouse her, trying

hard as I might to resurrect her and

she sits up; but

it is not her,

--and then we hear the singing and I tell her

"How active the ghosts are!",

and one of them is banging on the side of the washing machine

as her eyes pop open

in dead and stunned, silent wonder...

To the mall

we ramble because Uri Geller has opened a stone archway

over an old store

littered with graffiti and I wave,

And someone has bought all of Chaplin's films

and the girl with me says,

"Great to take away everyone's source of pleasure!"

(But he screameth bigly when he realizes

--you can't make money on them!

and then a miniature Chaplin comes careening

[like a small grey mass]

out of the sack called Time and Space labeled and--)