It's Not My Fault You're A Poltergeist

 

Could you please, please

Please

For the love of God

For just one hour

Stop haunting my bloody living room?

You supernatural wanker

You smug, ethereal, invisible prick. 

Banging on doors and

Tugging at curtains

Then presumably, silently, laughing yourself sick

Were you like this when you were alive?

Stealing things? Slamming doors? 

Adding things to the search history on my laptop?

Except now you’re invisible, 

So you’re extra delighted with yourself. 

Did you take my pen? Was that you?

Because it’s not where I put it this morning.

And this has all the hallmarks of your behaviour. 

It’s pathetic. 

It’s derivative. 

Do you genuinely find this rewarding?

Is this what you talk about at spooky club?

To all the other ghosts?

“I stole a pen”?

“He was looking for a pen but… whoaaaah! 

It wasn’t where he expected!

Terrifying!

I’d used my otherworldly powers to hide it

Because I’m a restless entity

Beyond mortal comprehension.”

I hope the other ghosts laugh at you.

I hope they do it to your face

If you even have one

I hope you meet a ghost who’s done a murder, 

Or a possession

And you feel, rightfully, inadequate by comparison

Where’s my pen?

I hope you die again, only worse. 

And it’s really painful and humiliating

And then you’re still a ghost, 

But next time you get a different curse

Where you’re compelled to roam the earth 

Putting things back where they belong

Or closing doors

Or working out which day the bins go out

Or dispensing pens

Rather than stealing them when I need them most

I’ve looked up your name and it means, “Noisy spirit.”

But it shouldn’t say that. It should say, “Tosser.”

Because that is what you are. 

Literally, I suppose, because you do throw things about

But that’s not what I mean

I mean, you should be ashamed of yourself

Using the spiritual realm to mess up my house

Anyway. 

I found my pen. 

It was in the car. 

I’m not apologising. 

It might not have been you, but

It’s the sort of thing you would have done

If you were real

Callback Humour

A little preamble to this poem. 

I wrote it in response to an album of music by my friend Ric Neale. The album - 'Parting Ways' - deals with grief and loss, and who we become when someone we love is no longer part of our lives. Despite the subject matter, the album is not bleak or depressing. Rather, it is shot through with humour and warmth, exploring the memories that live with us and define us in the aftermath of loss, and celebrating the joy of knowing these people in the first place.

You can find the album here, and I massively recommend giving it your time. After you've read my poem, of course. 

Callback Humour

I had to go away

But I left myself behind

Hiding, in plain sight

An absence shot through every day

Like a papercutting, revealing nothing,

Until the background falls away

I let my shadow burn and cut

Into all the places that I stood

I’ve been doing this for years

Making patterns in the world around you

Silhouettes that curve and carve an epitaph

For when I’m no longer here

I wanted some small way to keep on holding

Your hand

With mine

For you to hear my voice

In the spaces and the 

Silences

That I leave behind

So I’ve been weaving threads and ribbons into 

The little moments of our lives

Leaving a million associations

Setting up punchlines and 

Unfinished rhymes

Hoping my bad impressions

Will continue to make you smile, 

When you come across

The genuine article

You’ll hear my cadence

Somewhere in their voice

We coined a thousand catchphrases

Like we were in our own show

But there was only ever one viewer

Just you, in the future

Letting endless repeats 

Of your favourite moments play

Bad jokes and callback humour

As the real me fades away

I was just doing my best dance for you

Making shapes

And currents in the air

That you can feel, and hold

And move to the music you’ll still hear

When I’m no longer there

A picture of us, etched into your days

Wearing grooves through 

Beats and repetition

Trying to glow bright, so my afterimage

Can flicker forever in your field of vision

And I’ll be with you longer

And hold your gaze better

Than a face staring out from

A thousand photographs

I’ll be with you as long

As you remember

There was a boy

A while ago

Who loved to make you laugh

After Swimming

 

The skin on the back of my hand

Smells faintly of chlorine

I showered after swimming

But not very well, it seems

I think, subconsciously, I want

To hold on

To that sharp, clean tang 

It’s the smell of Saturday morning

Eccleshill baths, 

Me and John

Enjoying the present that became the past

After swimming, upstairs in the cafe

Weak, burnt, bitter hot chocolate

In thin, pale brown, plastic cups

Table top Galaxian machines

If we still had 10p pieces

The echoey cacophony of the pool below

Cannonball jumps and shouts and whistles

A noisy shallow end sloping away

To the quiet abyss of the deep end

I only went up on those diving boards once

A climb of 19 cold, metal rungs

That brought me out half a mile above the pool

I could not jump

And I was too scared to climb back down

I must have, I guess, eventually.

Here I am

The smell of chlorine on my hands

Strong and real

A tiny boy with all of Saturday before him

An older man

Drifting back to deep water

Hot chocolate

And sheer, undiluted joy

He Read Her Like a Book

 

He read her like a book

Which is to say

He kept losing interest and

Checking his phone

She was a beautiful text

With a beautiful face

Not that he’d ever know

He kept losing his place and

Skipped bits which, if read, would have

Helped him make sense

Of the things she would say

He’d go over some parts

Again and again

Tutting and muttering

“What’s going on..?”

The more he read, 

The less sense she made

He’d ruffle through

The slowly diminishing 

Number of pages

To see how far he had to go ‘til finishing

And it was quite clear 

From the way his forehead creased

That the answer was

“Too far for this guy to be bothered with.”

And so, one fine morning

She straightened her spine and she

Put on her jacket

She had subtext to offer

And this guy couldn’t hack it

She needed someone 

More engaged, less defeatist

So she left

For a boy with a tan

And a much longer

Attention span.