I’m not sure I’d want to speak with ghosts. I think it would be either really terrifying, or really annoying. There are always things left unsaid when a person passes—unspoken “goodbyes” or “I loves yous” or “Don’t forget to unplug the toasters.” I’m just not sure I’d want to be the conduit for all those messages from the beyond.
Sharon Olds’ has a close encounter with her father’s ghost . . .
My Father Speaks to Me from the Dead
by: Sharon Olds
I seem to have woken up in a pot-shed,
on clay, on shards, the glitter paths
of slugs kiss-crossing my body. I don't know
where to start, with this grime on me.
I take the spider glue-net, plug
of the dead, out of my mouth, let's see
if where I have been I can do this.
I love your feet. I love your knees,
I love your our my legs, they are so
long because they are yours and mine
both. I love your—what can I call it,
between your legs, we never named it, the
glint and purity of its curls. I love
your rear end, I changed you once,
washed the detritus off your tiny
bottom, with my finger rubbed
the oil on you; when I touched your little
anus I crossed wires with God for a moment.
I never hated your shit—that was
your mother. I love your navel, thistle
seed fossil, even though
it's her print on you. Of course I love
your breasts—did you see me looking up
from within your daughter's face, as she nursed?
I love your bony shoulders and you know I
love your hair, thick and live
as earth. And I never hated your face,
I hated its eruptions. You know what I love?
I love your brain, its halves and silvery
folds, like a woman's labia.
I love in you
even what comes
from deep in your mother—your heart, that hard worker,
and your womb, it is a heaven to me,
I lie on its gentle hills and gaze up
at its rosy vault.
I have been in a body without breath,
I have been in the morgue, in fire, in the slagged
chimney, in the air over the earth,
and buried in the earth, and pulled down
into the ocean—where I have been
I understand this life, I am matter,
your father, I made you, when I say now that I love you
I mean look down at your hand, move it,
that action is matter's love, for human
love go elsewhere.
I have had dreams/visions, like Olds, of waking up in strange places and speaking with a long-dead loved one—most of the time, one of my sisters or my mother. I’ve found those dreams both comforting and disturbing, depending on the loved one’s words.
I always feel surrounded by my dead. In fact, I sometimes talk to them. Not in the Whoopi Goldberg Ghost way. I just have one-sided conversations with them when I’m struggling with a decision. My mother and older sister were always sounding boards for me when I needed advice.
I do believe in ghosts/spirits/souls. From a Christian standpoint, I was brought up to believe we all have souls that survive our fleshly time on this planet. From a Stephen King fanboy standpoint, I will never knowingly step foot in a haunted house. From a metaphysical standpoint, I have experienced moments of intense connection with the spirit of a place/person. (I defy anyone to visit the Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor and not feel the weight of all the lives that were lost there.)
The image of my dearly departeds constantly floating near me gives me pause. Think about everything you do on a daily basis. Would you want your mother or father to witness all the things you do in a 24-hour period? As a teenage boy, I couldn’t imagine my maternal grandmother watching me at night in my bedroom. The very thought was enough to make me celibate.
Nowadays, I’m comforted by the growing list of ghosts who surround me daily. (As you get older, more and more ghosts join that throng.) It’s like I have my own team of angelic lawyers to argue my case with the Almighty. If I’m doing something that requires privacy, I figure my dead are smart enough to practice some otherworldly discretion.
I took the day off work, so I’ve had a lot of time to write and think today, which can be both good and bad. I worked on my poetry manuscript, and I practiced church music for this weekend. At the entrance to one of the churches, there’s a lovely flower garden with statues of angels and Jesus and Mary. The temperature was close to 90 degrees, and blooms were vibrant and fragrant. I stood outside for several minutes, just inhaling and thinking how much my mother would have loved the scene. It almost felt like her ghost was standing right beside me, admiring the orange and while petals.
Saint Marty wrote a poem about good and bad choices, based on the following two prompts from The Daily Poet:
July 24: Write a poem in which the title begins with “Why.” Examples: “Why I’d Like to Meet My Maker,” “Why I Would Never Dye My Hair.” In her poem “Why She Would Take Off Her Shoes Before Jumping From the Golden Gate Bridge,” Annette Spaulding-Convy writes: Maybe the water / / is a temple and She doesn’t want / / to bring the road’s dirt / / inside. Push to move past expected responses to strange and imaginative ones. For extra credit, compose your poem in couplets.
July 25: Write a poem wherein you swear off something or someone. Examples: caffeine, booze, porn, Sex in the City reruns, a toxic boyfriend or girlfriend, a drug-addicted child. Tell us specifically (with concrete images) why you are saying goodbye to a bad habit or toxic alliance, then show us how your decision will change your life for the better.
Why I Swore Off Porn
by: Martin Achatz
It was challenging in high school, like getting
someone to buy me beer from White’s Liquor Pantry.
The girls always looked sad, as if
Charlotte hadn’t saved Wilbur in the end.
And the guys always looked like Darren Vanhoff
who tried to drown me in swim class.
There were too many grammar errors—
modifiers dangling in inappropriate places.
Princess Leia, in her metal bikini, strangled
Jabba the Hutt with her BDSM chains.
They’re aren’t many good words that rhyme
with it: corn, shorn, mourn, forlorn,
and Gorn, that lizard man Captain Kirk
fought in between getting it on with all
those alien pole dancers in sequins,
trying to save their worlds from oblivion.
Everyone in the pictures and videos have
mothers, fathers, little brothers, maybe goldfish.
Hi, my name is Martin, and my turn-ons are someone
washing my dinner dishes, afternoon naps, salted caramels.
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