Really the Only Kind

Instead of a vessel of ghosts,
What kind of human could you be?
No such kind of human exists,

Or only in a prior tense—
They had their ghosts, but most of them
Have been mostly scraped out of them,

And now they’re doubly demoted,
Not just to ghostless animals
But to domesticated plants—

People pass a person mumbling,
Disconnected from the tangle.
Somehow, simultaneously,

Those observers casually
Refer to the person as both
Haunted and a vegetable,

Neither true, and both together
Impossible. The ghosts of ghosts
Are haunting the ghosts of persons

Cut from the world but still living.
Meanwhile, the skulls of all the rest
Still function as storage units,

Inns, and hostels for clouds of ghosts,
The real being haunted, no sheets,
No specters, no ectoplasm.

A recording of Cantata
66, chosen by AI,
Plays peacefully from a personal

Assistant, while you consider
For the nth occasion, the light
On the cliffs, peaks, and stucco walls.

A roadrunner is on recon.
It pauses beside a white chair,
The paint all flaking from the gray,

Cracked pine underneath.
The day is so brilliant, so bright.
But none of these are ghosts, either.

 Ghosts are voices you know, voices
Drilled into your skull for the shelves
Continually bartering

With other voices. The barter,
The exchange, makes you the vessel,
Haunted, hunted, human vessel.