it’s fun at first, living in this haunted house.
you come home to a party at night:
all illegal liquor and old-fashioned lingo.
you make yourself popular with the ghosts
by playing a tune your great-grandfather
used to lapse back into singing
when he started to lose his mind,
the piano he left you humming in a manner
it hasn’t since his fingers went still.
he isn’t here: tied to some other place perhaps,
or moved on into the light after all, the uncertain
mercy of the afterlife being a fickle thing like that.
these ghosts are all young folks, done to dust so
many years ago, one big rolling party
that hums and sways into eternity with a brightness
that hurts your eyes if you look at it too long:
and yet there’s a frantic fervor to these spirits
that makes it hard to look away, as if
they need you to see.
It’s not the music that gets you in the end,
not the dancing, not the constant flow
of drinks, not even the raucous laughter and
conversations. it’s the fact that everything
plays out the same no matter what you do:
the young couple who have a fight in the
corner are going to have that argument
- I know all about your floozy! -
the young men who look at each other
longingly but never speak are going to
continue not speaking
- the tragedy! -
the friends who come to blows are going to
punch each other out
- over money neither needs now! -
and nothing will ever be resolved or begin anew
because the music never changes
and the liquor flows and flows
and the dancers
and the party
and the party
and the party
remain.
you burn the house down
and hope.
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