18th
ON BECOMING A GHOST
When the angels shovel into the ground, kick up at them, spit in their eyes, use your belt to whip them across the face, pull their blond hair—this will be difficult because no matter what, you will love them. It is irresistible. What you must do is, even filled with love, allow your body (whose only impulse is to remain) to act in its own way—in the end, it’s a more powerful mechanism than the soul, and in the end it isn’t kind, trust it. The angels will give up easily, they simply haven’t got the time. It’s the monsters you have to worry about. With them, you must take a radically different approach: grin, but allow the rest of your face to slacken easily, relax your shoulders, let your feet fall apart. The monsters might think the angels have already gotten to you and they will dig a tunnel to the next on their list. If you’ve gotten this far, you’re doing well, but this next part is the hardest. You must be resourceful. Find a digging tool—a pall bar or a piece of edging—and dig as quietly as you can so no one hears. Pull yourself up and, as smoke, begin to inhabit the land of the living. From now on it will be twilight all the time and, remember, you haven’t got a friend in the world.
THE HOUSE ON VERSE LN.
For Arthur Rimbaud
It is as if my partner has gone around the corner of the house to blot out a cigarette he knows he would be scolded for by me. I can’t see him, I can prove nothing, but I know exactly what has happened. That is what it is like to live with a ghost. I am always just missing you, Arthur. Every night I hear the gunshot in a different room of the house. I fling open the door not to find you wailing in agony and wicked betrayal, but my cat who is pretending to have knocked over the blender. My second clue is that things are never where I left them. My third is that thunderstorms have been stamping by, nightly, with tears in their eyes, which never happens in the winter. This is how I know you are haunting me, Arthur. But who would believe me? That’s why I have to write a poem about you, dimmed-down spirit. I won’t be thought to have lost it, because anything can happen in a poem.
both poems by Eric Ekstrand
