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Welcome to My Haunted House

The corners of its walls are vigilant
To this musty stillness
A sort of skeleton
To the illusionary experience
One has in these spaces
Buffered by dusty cobwebs and puffs
Of forgotten smoke,
Those rings of contemplation,
The coughed up evidence,
And splattered memories
Missed by what should have been
A regular schedule of maintenance
And for the random dispersal of those things
That slick and harden with time and neglect
I ascend the stairs
Winding up this castle Mott
Whose exterior splendor
Has been carefully internalized
Skillfully turned inside out
And modestly compartmentalized
It has been trained and domesticated to a
Utilitarian purpose -
A tribute to some now dated
Architectural expression
Of what was important at the time
It displays the stale
Mildewed remnants of the once
Stolid neighborhood home
With its fresh angles and lingering odors
Of dissipating carpenter's chemicals
And the diminishing pungency of sawdust
A high density reality of a
Watercolor rendition of the atomic age
With its Cape Cod Split level bungolows
And longhorn jet plane shaped ranch spreads
Wrapped in swaths of pastel prints and rustic brown
With sharp angles and blue green water
Pine trees and images of fish
Recreation rooms and fully stocked
Knotty pine bars with hair pin turntables
And vinyl records scattered all about
Between the steps
Those subtle gears of eternal rest
Each one keyed into its own
Forgotten black and white memory
Cherub faces and folksy primitivism
Obscured by dust
And the feet of others
Those many dozens of pairs of shoes
Marching up and down through time
Each with a personality
And something on its mind
Upwards they turn
Up this Alpine mountain switchback
Climbing ever higher
Inside this wooden labyrinth
This Trojan horse,
This Castle Keep…
Images of ghostly women
With creeping trains of night clothes
Lilting between the floors,
Living in the strata of undisturbed air
Whose particulates are layered by density
By the meticulous organization of gravity-
Sifting by graduating weight
Over vast periods of time they
Form concentrated bands that
That orbit endlessly in suspended motion and
Slide into my brain like cool sheeted water
While my somnambulant feet squeeze tiny cries from
Creaking floorboards,
Those willing mouthpieces of spirits,
And the demons bound within
This massive hollow tree
Howl and whisper endlessly
Repeating the forgotten memories of others
Dried and curled up in shadows
Stuck in corners behind door jams
And the cord extrusions of the window sash
Unwrapped and stinking of
Mysteries unwanted,
With secrets – of nobody's concern,
But rising higher
The air is lighter!
The rafters lower
And the sky presses down
On the top of my skull
I can feel its cerulean blueness,
It's crisp infinite perspective,
And cool freedom…
To poke my head above
And pierce this roof,
To break the fibrous membrane
Of this wooden bubble -
This twisted lattice of rubble -
Is to risk the wrath
Of the peaceful house below
And to strain a pact
I never made but
Nonetheless, is inherently inferred
By the liars that live here
Within the shadows
And the glaring rays of light
Who plot on, but not for life
But in vain, pathetic attempts
To steer the subtle currents
And to nurture any lingering doubt
Counting on the singular misdirected step,
The momentary lapse of consciousness,
The inevitable mistake,
Depending on the regularity
Of this unending tide of
Breakdown and absorption,
Crashing upon the shores of
These plaster palisades
Betting on the bad luck of the draw,
The calculated empty roll of the dice…
The estimated final surrender -
Oh, they'll hang your portrait
On the wall of this staircase
Like all the others
It will gaze down at me
With all its history and morbid sadism
And vain attempts at subverting my psyche
By summoning only those miniscule powers
The house, and its roots in the earth below it,
Can muster on its own
I must do my part
Fear is my true gift to this tabernacle
While Patience is its stony face
The house may outlast me
It knows how to wait
How to add my few lines of history
To its massive black ledger
Brick by brick
Deed by deed,
To stretch my uninhabited skin
Upon these ancient floral patterned panels…
While I succumb to the mockery
Of my own pompous execution
And give in to the inevitable
Fairy tale of my capitulation
For only my growing fear
And overwhelming despair would be
Palatable sustenance for these hungry Gods
And be welcomed as just payment
For this matrix of mind and memory,
This rat trap of wood and nails,
And the privilege to hang quietly upon
This rough hewn crucifix of commitment,
This family tree of gnarled desperation
That beckons -
Curling slowly around its central stack of heated air
Rooms spinning off like satellites
Eddy pools of once gathered nesting remnants
Soft fabric traps of coddled hope
And finally realized shortcomings
Cold dead rooms cut loose by stunted lives
Dusty, closed books of children
And spinster aunts
And old raisin men who died in rocking chairs
Leaving only weathered yellow files
It states its case for posterity
For the dignity of the public record
For the heritage of families
Whose stodgy traditions stain these walls
Scratching indelibly into the woodwork
And hanging heavy in the air
Wafting up the
Rungs in the ladder-like spine
Of this structure
This rickety and splintered double helix
With sticky sap oozing from its joints
Like ectoplasm or ancient amber
Referencing back to the woody origins
Of this tower of illusion
To the cool forests of the north
Where thick haired ruminants
Wearing great racks of horns
Prance under dark nights with bright stars
Softly pulsing attenuated light
Into fresh virgin snow
They are sawed and nailed this way and that
And covered with skins of rocks
And the bark of trees once wild
Now reconstituted and barren
Hung belly up on these sharp fingers of wood
Belching putrid colors that are
Nurtured only by sagging moisture and fungal growth
And I have forgotten the meaning
Of my presence here
It is said that I can be seen on this floor
Or another, from time to time
Or between floors upon the staircase
To these walls I am still alive
Fading slowly into their arms
Every night
Pounding out my epitaph
Every night
Pacing out my litany
Every night
Riveted in fear
Day comes and so the night
A stroboscopic ripple in the time lapse view
And from a point outside this dwelling
A shadowy figure can be sometimes seen
Ascending and descending these stairs
It is often joined by the company of others...




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