Ghosts weigh down my sleep.
Some people call them memories recalled
in the depth of un-day, undulating 
my body in its watery bed, the dark form 
in the corner of my room. It doesn’t
frighten me, it doesn’t wear a rabbit suit,
but it stares me invisible until and while
I sleep.
                     It makes me ghost.
Unanchored, I float to your eye sockets
in search of refracted light within your reminisce.
The drowned Mediterranean sailor, searching
for his gold teeth so that he might again smile
and feel some anchor to his feverish grief.
A fading phoenix caged by oval chains
underneath the surface of belief
like a watery unlit cigarette which bleeds
but to bleed would mean to leave.

I find mixed messages and oxymorons 
shallowly lapping in the depth of your mind
and I see that you’ve stared wide eyed 
at the sun for much too long and now, 
supernovas collapse on the back of your eyelids.
They cloud your sight and you only see through
a film, a different lens than I. 

I am abnormal, an aberration because when you sleep,
you see stars and I see men driven mad by the haunting vocals
of thin-lipped sirens. They anchor themselves 
deep to the ocean floor with jagged rocks braided 
to their necks by a sailor’s noose, thick roped 
and knotted tight so they can dive faithfully
into the sea, sinking, searching for something
that isn’t there.

I am more 
of a ghost now than I’ve ever 
been before.

Maybe so, just remember
that was me you saw, now as the sun wavers
distantly above in the grave freedom. 
My thoughts anchored to this
where below is forever, the pool of reflection 
the damned must writhe and stare into,
enduring the words the Ocean Echo sings,
seaweed haired horror,
with no knife to silence the lies.
Sartre spoke correct.
                             Hell, 
other people, is hearing the ghost
anchored to your flailing, fallen.
sand sunken shell.

There are stories whispered at dusk
by the cathead where the anchors, 
all the flukes in the ship (in our lives), 
are secured. Stories of men, ghosts 
who drag themselves over the murky 
ocean floor, with eyes wide shut
pursuing their voices, stolen, plucked 
out of their throats by a giggling siren
who serenades just out of 
reach.

I think I lost my voice
the first time you saw stars.

My story is buried now, the starlight
glimmers cannot reach the serenades
or the whispers of men who have words
worth listening to. All I have left are jangles
and lidless moans, it would be a cacophony
but my anchor lies alone, chuckling at me
with every mote of rust crawling across
its back. I mouth Coleridge to myself
to the sleep that will never come, but
I do see some stars, the creatures intrigued
by a wisping wallowing wight
shining in the sea.
The Shining of all the souls
trapped by the anchors
that they can
or cannot
see.

—

collaboration with the talented infinitesplinters.