Jeff Clark

 

The Ghost Has No Home

This morning in an alleyway I was startled by a face 
I seemed to recognize, in a dormer above a garage 
and so slunk up to him, who was ranting quietly, 
mauling the mind of some imagined ear out the pane 
as if maligned, or high, like one 
moony and almost witless in a poppy ditch, 
or one waking ill and supine 
in a wet bed of opening mullein: 
"I have no desire to theorize language- 
I was raised modestly and have sinned unspeakably.

I would rather waylay and destroy 
whose voice molests me." 
On his desk a thin book I knew, a tragedy 
whose residue was a Sentry's couplet I half-knew 
and began to recite- startling him who turning was outwardly 
unknown to me- , '‘Does it hurt in your ears- '' 
"F*** Antigone- I detest language, I detest artifice, 
I would rather waylay and molest 
the beast that has imagined and pent me here."