tenement roofs illuminated not by stars, not by grace, but by the flickering hum of a busted neon sign, half a block down, where the laundromat breathes steam into the night, and someone’s mother folds shirts like prayers.

the tar is soft under bare feet, summer’s last gasp clinging to the gravel, and the pigeons, they don’t sleep, they just blink slowly as if remembering something from before the city learned to forget.

a boy throws a paper plane from the sixth-floor fire escape. it loops once, then dives into the alley, where a cat watches with the patience of old gods.

the air smells of fried onions, like rain that hasn’t arrived yet, and the sigh of a man who’s been waiting for a phone call since 1993.

someone laughs, too loud, too sudden, and the sound ricochets off the satellite dishes like a warning or a dare.

the roofs glowed, not golden, not holy, but with the kind of light that makes you think maybe ghosts wear sneakers and hum pop songs while tracing the outline of their old bedrooms in dust.

and somewhere below, a radio plays a song no one remembers the name of, but everyone knows the words.

The ghosts remain
Long after the pain.
Haunting this sagging haunting house,
Whispering to me,
We’re lonely lonely lonely.
Need more friends in this rotting haunted human home.
The house rots around me,
A house I cannot escape-
On house arrest for crimes I do not remember committing.
You can paint it how you want, they hiss
But we will remain.
They hide just free from view-
They come out in the dark when only I am home.
The ghosts do love to reminisce,
they’re a cruel nostalgic bunch.
Remember why we have come, they say
Or bring more ghosts so our voices may get through.
“I will bring you more” I sigh-
They laugh at my submission.
Soon this house will collapse,
More ghosts than foundation.
But until then or until they cease their wails,
I will bring more ghosts by the day,
Until the supports completely fail.

Who would walk this airless swamp?
Or bike this muggy path,
For if you slow down to a saunt,
The finger grass scratches and the flies attack.
Perhaps the Massachusett fleeing from Myles Standish' blade,
Like starving phantoms behind black swamp trunks,
Their children hushing in dense river grape.

Im well acquainted with Norman greed,
And want to escape it for the day,
But I see a ribbon latched onto something green,
Can't quite possibly swallow it, but won't let it get away.
I get back on my bike, like always try to forget,
And find the eastern Blue Hill passage,
As a speeding portage over the fly sipping rivulet.

They catch me all the same,
Can't pedal past the buzzing in my ear,
How the archival wetland drains,
The tree roots hit hard and knock the chain out of gear.
I walk my bike by the bridle down a narrow funnel,
The water is idle over planked footbridge,
Amongst the potent poison umbel.

I find an old rusted vehicle gate,
Leading to a long aborted highway road,
At midnight the path was saved,
As if this ghostly wetland could vote.
The hardtop was pierced by **** and scrub,
This isolated courtyard bordered by ravines ,
And tortured by the sun.

I walk the barren courtyard to the hills,
A misty bluish humid outskirt,
I walk the courtyard until,
I see a worker with a whitish shirt,
Then I dont know if I really saw it,
" You cannot enter here" –then got down on his hands–
With antlers–gallopped into the humid forest.

For some time I stayed there staring,
An arrowhead of flaked obsidian at my feet,
Amongst the scrub pierced hardtop of courtyard barren,
That pointed back to my path, barring east,
"To Fowls Meadow" I must have missed it on my left,
Under a locust tree,
That caused it to sparkle from its fine leaf net.

I ride down, to a massive tree overturned,
The roots and earth were in the sky,
In the massive hole something burned,
A knapped glass arrowhead, of yellow light.
It did not seem to be of yellow chert,
Strange!
Under five hundred years of dirt.

I had enough of this twisted place,
Verged in toxin, which I am immune,
I double time to pick up the pace,
Past hydric black mud of airless doom,
And the choking frogs one note song,
In eye thirsty thorns,
That you must unzip before moving on.

It opens up in a plain,
My bike startles many blackbirds up,
Their red streaked wings rise as flames,
Below the Meadow dust,
But there is something at my fore,
A doe's tail?
Swinging softly back and forth.

A girl! Amongst the Meadow way out here?
Walking non chalantly between
the riverine,
With music in her ears,
Is it real or do I dream?
Her shoulders must have been my mirage
Glistening in a cut white shirt,
In a beautiful decolletage.

I could not possibly pass her,
Without giving her a fright,
Due to her music I could not ask her,
So I dismounted my bike.
Half clad–elegantly so,
Clad in beautuful nature,
Like the buff-brown slender doe.

I walked my bike beside the reins,
All the Meadow was colored brass,
Lost in her french braids,
As the sun behind stained glass.
Gathered the courage, to look upon her face–
Scared that it would be concealed,
And like a seraphim fly away.
She smiles beautifully,
I tell her I love her, she can't hear a word I say,
Then I gallop down the dusty trail–
And disappear into the river grape.

I haunt this house I once called home

The floors creak

The cats watch me

But your grief exists around me—untouched

I have seen the joy leave your body

I have seen you wracked by sobs,

Curled in the bed we slept in together

I see your eyes wander,

Glaze over,

All of your consciousness lost to another place

Another time, perhaps?

I remember the day we first came here

Some velvet-lined, sepia-colored summer afternoon

I said that we would die in this house

I did not dream

Had not thought

That I would be the death of us

Meanwhile, in an apartment downtown,

My soul walks the well-worn path of an ordinary life

Brush my teeth

Feed the cat

Open the window and breathe in the soft autumnal morning light

My heart sits at table in front of a mojito,

Laughing at another man’s jokes

And the mint tastes like starting over

And the laughter feels like freedom

But my heart

My heart feels like homesickness and guilt

And my head is already on his chest

As we lay in the quiet dark

All of the fragmented pieces of myself

Disjointed

As though you were the glue that held us together

Within solitude
Forever speaking to ghosts
Who never speak back.