Ghost

Ghost

What I am now is what

Guys in my college dorm

Called someone seldom seen

A ghost prefers no company

A university phantasm

May actually want to graduate

And go into higher degrees

I wanted to party

Despite that I barely graduated

Now my party days are over

I learned to ghost

After years of care for my mother

Who was a ghost for years

Social with a few neighbors

Aging and defects stopped her

A pandemic halted any contact

No diseases gonna deghost me

Pork roast in the oven

Dishes in the countertop machine

Microwave oven beeps potatoes done

What I sew is nearly done

čhegnáke the Lakota word for loincloth

A train horns its way through Iowa

Electricity charges this thing

Jim Wright never had

Up from a nap my brain not refreshed

A simple name escaped me

It's almost as if it was never caught

Behind the neuronic bars

Some things are never prisoners

In that aged fat gael in my head

One day everything will break out

To wander this universe I call

Godd

The ultimate sheriff whose badge

Shines bright even to days beyond

Until it explodes or gets

The thumb and forefinger

Slowly twisting up the wooden match

To extinguish it's flame

Big damn flame

To the future

This was never written

If found lore will create my story

Full of professorial lies

Created by people who claimed

To know me even as a ghost

Those people are lying

What to remember

Is that simple failures

Became these faithless words

Tippy typed across a glowing screen

Barefoot words covered in sandals

Of letters strapped with aches

Cracked heals so dry

Capital letters deceive you

To render meaninglessness

A language full of sand

Swepted with brushes

By ghost students who seek

Degrees of redemption

Over here over here they scream

We found his skull and blunted finger

Wow he typed hard

Boo I will say as I look over their efforts

They aren't listening

They were out drinking the night before

I've learned to dance in my ghost life

Open the doors to the buffalo

I'm accepted because I'm a ghost

Who no longer colonizes

Or owns chunks of land

All ghosts are one

Even if those like me are suspect

A thief of words now

Soon silent dancers let me join

Bless them because I was always

Ghost 

Life is forgotten

Air is forgotten

Mother is forgotten

The beep of a microwave is forgotten

Dinner is done

Time for meds that make me disappear

Hells bells I'm a sinner

And not kosher

Nothing of this may survive

Spare change anyone

This ghost needs a cab

To another universe

Even godd agrees

Barry G. Wick