The Ghosts of Self

I’ve got some business that is unknown
to those who are kept close.

Like a lonely pedestrian smacking his worn-out soul,

I walk past the fashion culture. An abstract nebbish,
a solitary voice
crying for a change in nihility.

“There’s tofu melting on the grill,” a wannabe coffin sleeper said.

It must run in the family like West Virginia moonshine dependence.

Fixin’ to die
as the last bounty hunter
tucks in his kid.

A proud parent. A fretless elder
fabricating a connection between past

mistakes and the eternal hunger of
parental aspirations.

Like liquor store
stories,
they’re one and the same.

The bones have left their coats
at the door. Claim tickets stuffed into

eye sockets.

That was the show, bought and paid for.

An amateur, acoustic guitar solo
dedicated to the people with no ears.

The end floats in
as if the clouds brought forth fortified castles

which stand in fortification,
unable to reveal inner secrets.
Castles from a thousand years ago.

At times, the archer waves the village close in.
But the jester distracts like

a bad drug
thumps
one heavy in the head.