M O R S E L
1.
He met the ghost through phonesex and he said his name was Father.
Phonesex like most things was written by fire. Father would burn kindle
and hair. Pushing smoke signals with a stick out of hole in the wall in the
room that no had windows.
Walls that had no windows had curtains patterned with massive flowers
each as big as Father’s head.
The man named Father compares his head to the flowers on the curtain, his
head has grown one quarter bigger.
Simple, to get a blonde ghost you would burn blondish hair. To get a
brunette you would burn burnettish hair.
He could spend his money on beef or wing. He could spend his money on
more money. He spent his money on hair.
Beware of burning dyed hair. A noise of pumping blood of something
swallowing something larger will fill the room.
2.
Father piled black hair, spaghetti hair, see through hair, red hair, and
custard hair. 5 inch deep pubic clippings.
Burning it one night he pushed the smoke with a broom out of the hole.
One massive ghost or 100 puny ghosts put together. Ghost was too big for
Father to couple with or press against or sexing with. Father used his body
like a genital, placed inside the ghost, backward and forward; all of him
hulled inside it now.
3.
Dawn is swollen like a rooster’s head.
The earhole was bigger than his mouth. Could feel the billion tiny bones that
weren’t there. Moved his mouth to say his mother’s name into her. What
came out of her mouth was his name: Father, Father, Father. He took that
name and went outside to use it on people.
He named the ghost Her.
4.
Love was made each night like bread. Father’s body broke in half, half way
through. First his head grew back on hips. Last his head sat on two shoes.
And he could be mistaken for a Mr. Potato Head, mistaken for dead.
Father tried breaking up with the ghost by disguising her. Human skull,
stuffed head, metal or wooden head with curly black hair, black cat. Finally
he settled upon a hat of 30 horns, with a hot dog skewered on each. Tricked
a dog into eating her horns and all, saw that it was good.
5.
The man named Father kept an x-ray of his urethra. Where he’d hid a strand
of ghosthair in a cylinder. Burning ghosthair would conjure something in the
flesh and blood he could love, could hold onto, a pet turtle or a bride.
Silence made of beef. Father knew, and he filled his room with beef, till the
sound of Her went out.
M O R S E L
1.
As a child I drew a ghost on my face with red ink and my ghost was
transposed upon a pillow. The lakes run red with ghosts.
The woods sound like skins.
By 1896: trees were drained of sperm, the locals trudging home pillowcase
of sperm.
So the trees got together and made one gender that fit all trees from dead
bees and saliva, and saw that it was good. I built telephones for trees from
pollen doused in kerosene. Smoke shredded by a tree into conversation. Its
gender tucked under beehives.
A ghost with a pillow over its face can be used to make the sound of snow.
But also kills chickens. The light runs red.
Don’t eat light. You will be unable to digest any meat or wing again. You
will be doomed to inhale light through the slits in a paper bag.
The woods sound like light.
2.
Light like milk curdles. Light will curdle in your stomach. You will
need two stomachs. One to turn the light into pee. And one to
churn its shadow into manure. In scientific circles this is called
“double dipping.”
Curdled Light: the history of ghosts. Ghosts start as colds or flu or
pox, this is how they learn your name. A ghost is emptied by
scratching, or the pouring of food from the mouth, pollenating the
air with a ghost.
I once gathered manure shat there by second stomachs in my
pillowcase. I would scorch the nettles and grasses blackened with
urine. Summoning Satan with his black hair and cookie colored
face. I would feed him manure, in return he would retell the same
joke: If fatty means “full of fat”, skinny mean “full of skin”.
3.
“They will bury ghosts in our pillows.”
“They will bury ghosts in us.”
4.
Or mother pulls manure through a gap in her second stomach. Germinating
an orchard of stumps. Shoveling severed fingers in each stump in holes cut
with her 30 horns. Nursing the fingers into genitals as stumps bend into
trees. Scratch and scars on the bark where mother’s nails dug and carried her
weight in pails of sperm.
Ghost: the language barrier. The only way to get a house to talk was to burn
the house. Not even the orchard would burn; the fire would dribble against
the bark like urine. Humming came from the orchard like machines or
mouths full of silly string.
5.
Some people think silence is ghost. But really ghost comes in cavities. When
the brownish light is struck from a tooth, ghost sprays the silence like silage.
Silence: the measurement of how well cooked a ghost is.
A pack of ghosts is called a “hand”.
I shall sink my teeth into a ghost.
For a punishment I was sent to the coop in our backyard. I was to hatch 20
eggs from my bug shaped belly. After laying 20 eggs, only 1 would survive.
Night above, I would eat my last hatchling through a slit in my paper bag.
I tuck my ghost into my shirt.
My mother has a ghost that goes all the way to her belly. Mine’s just like it.
I shall sink my skull into her ghosts. The familiar tastes of won tons and
fingers. That familiar sound of the point at which the past becomes
silence.
6.
Ghost: a silence made of towns.
Nathan Gale