The Man Who Spoke to Ghosts
The Man who Spoke to Ghosts went deaf,
at least that's what he told me
under the bridge
warmed by cheap wine
and Sterno flame.
"You know you can't drink that shit to get high anymore, right?" he asked me.
He said it was great being deaf
because the whole world was wound up
neat and tight
in a package
in his head
where it hummed.
Now his ears were locks that kept it all in
and kept the voices out.
The Man who Spoke to Ghosts told me it was nice to be alone,
for once,
with his red wine
and canned heat
and his own thoughts -
alone without the voices to bother him.
He said the ghosts were tedious and dull,
had no soul,
no life,
nothing interesting to say.
He said they bored the shit out of him.
With their constant whining
and carping
and pining for the lives
they once had -
the lives they ignored when they had them.
He took another pull from his bottle,
gave me a slap on the knee,
and told me it was great being deaf.
"Finally, a little peace," he said.
Above us the semis
and commuters
and joyriders
rumbled past,
shaking the concrete pillars of his home.
Of course the Man who Spoke to Ghosts heard nothing.
I opened my mouth to say something
but stopped.
And the Man who Spoke to Ghosts went on being deaf.
