Part 2 of: I want to perform for ghosts!

I recite a love letter to a woman I was decades too late to meet.

Whose heart broke when he wiped it with his feet.

A sonnet to sons whose father's lost them along the way, 

building bridges for them to a better one day.

I write the words to the lullaby my aunt couldn't sing,

When I walked through rain drops till the pain stopped.

I say to her son "you are so much more than the hole you left when you left 

and I am so much more for that space you kept."

I hum to the strum of an old friend's long past playing, the twangs: 

whether in time or out of tune are heard on, long after you've passed on

When you passed on the chance to roll the dice on another hell of another day;

A hell I can't ever, wish never, will forever endeavour to avoid 

and one I vow to keep closed off from those who find themselves too alone to be alone.

I sing to the little sisters of big brothers,

Whose outrage I empathize most strongly with,

Whom I'd happily aid in tearing down every temple, totem, mosque, mosoleum, museum, cathedral, chapel, church and house of worship 

just to get another bit of rubble, 

just to stand a little taller,

just to get another insignificant inch higher 

Up that insurmountable incline between down here and up there!

All in attempts to stand toe to toe, to eye to eye to eye to every Him, Her, It and That that ever dared to claim to have a hand in fate.

To say "if you ever touch a sister,

You bait a beating from the brother."

That song might not be sweet, but it earns an "amen."

In epilogue, I leave a note for tomorrow's ghost,

You're with me even if I've never met you.

And if we have met and I missed the signs,

Misread you were okay, when you were actually just: fine...

Even though I'm aware it is not always my place to ask,

I hope I added less to your tears and more to your laughs.

Because you were here 

And if I don't understand anything else,

I understand being here.

In this moment that's enough,

Enough to empathize with all of you who've been here too.

And though we didn't and may not meet: I love you.

Each and every intangible, unknowable, time space and and everything inbetweenable you.

Because I can.

Because I do.

I bow neither baiting nor awaiting applause,

I leave the empty un-empty room, I hope, a little more full than when I entered into it.

And I hope I've left some of my own ghosts behind in it.

Ghosts of loved-loving among the lost-un-living.

It's a comfort for me to think of ghosts this way:

I can leave a room, but let a good part of me stay.

Part 1 of: I want to perform for ghosts!

I want to be a tour guide to haunted houses and towns.

I wish to glimpse ghosts, with an army of tourists around.

I'd introduce them to the unseen non-living lurkers
I imagine, over time, the undead and I becoming chummy co-workers:

For some I'd have nicknames,

Like stretch, gopher and hams.

With others: office games

Like "who's holding my hand?!"

All this in attempt to aim to gain
An audience made up of these unseen spectres of gloom.

“But Scott you fool, are you insane?
To enter an empty un-empty room
Of shadows from flickers of remnant remembrances
re-returning at given points of circumstan-instances;

An echo chamber of what's gone and what's come,
On nights Nans and Grans warned us to go every which way from?”

Yes. I'll stand there, in their haunted house home;

I'll take centre stage, eerily un-alone,

And on that makeshift stage (makeshift it must be,
because builders won't build where they're scared you see)

I'll take my mark and state my name,

Post mark, post name I'll stake this claim:

"Let those who aren't here, hear my request

Allow me to flood this falsely empty un-emptiness!

Hear me in my musings, that you might be amused,

Let said musings still your unending moves.

Remnants of what was, when it once was,

While being not now, what once you once were;

Let your eternity come to a pause,

And I'll humbly offer my poetry in, gracious return."

With prologue passed, silence starts ...

Gives way to a whisper and creak.

A shuffle summons a sliver of light.

Then in it I step, and from it I speak: