ghost story

Posted on November 18, 2012 by Susan L Daniels

I don’t think it’s me
that haunts you–
but maybe some idea of us

half-formed

threads a lightning heartbeat
through your ears

& flashes patterns
in the corners of your vision

almost seen
but not there enough

to touch

About Susan L Daniels

I am a firm believer that politics are personal, that faith is expressed through action, and that life is something that must be loved and lived authentically--or why bother with any of it?
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10 Responses to ghost story

  1. Trent Lewin says:
    November 18, 2012 at 12:44 pm

    I think it’s he that haunts you
    The ideas all flat and unformed
    Him on a mountain, him on a stool
    The patterns flash of him
    Alone, stolen, beholden
    To the ghost of you
    Where you float
    As a shade
    And return but fade
    And he wishes to touch
    Not spirit but flesh
    And you whisper as he sleeps
    And flee as he wakes

    Who is the ghost?
    Who is the penitent?
    You or him
    She or he
    Witnesses dispute
    The existence of either

  2. Susan L Daniels says:
    November 18, 2012 at 12:51 pm

    Oh!

    I have floated patterns
    on that ceiling
    where he sleeps
    spun my whisper
    with his dreaming voice
    into thread
    just spoken there
    but binding when awake

    who can witness passion
    or accuse desire

    such crimes leave no bodies
    & disappear
    after eyes open

  3. Green Speck says:
    November 18, 2012 at 2:03 pm

    This was a unique ghost story 🙂

  4. nelle says:
    November 18, 2012 at 7:43 pm

    So many places to take this, and for me, it might well find it’s haunt.

  5. paulmilnepoetry says:
    November 19, 2012 at 3:44 am

    Excellent. “Threads a lightning heartbeat / through your ears” is very fine indeed. Nice balance between the initial personalisation and then abstracting it out from the line “idea of us”. The idea becomes the poem instead of the real relationship. But you bring it back to the personal with the last line again. Thanks for this, as always.

    • Susan L Daniels says:
      November 19, 2012 at 10:26 am

      Oh, thank you Paul. Interestingly enough, the interaction described here involves none of an actual “me” and was conducted solely in the other person’s mind, where I had no control over the other person’s idea of me. Reminds me of one time, when my daughter was small, I was dreaming that she was behaving very badly–intensely enough to wake me up. A few moments later she came into my room to tell me she had a bad dream and ask if she could sleep with me. Half-asleep, I told her she had a lot of nerve, asking me that after what she just did! Her puzzled, “what?” woke me all the way up–I laughed and told her I had been dreaming, she had done nothing, and snuggled her back to sleep…

  6. Noel Ihebuzor says:
    November 22, 2012 at 6:23 am

    Ghosts, sleep walkers and dream travels!

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