Poem from the Past
Mar. 9th, 2006 04:27 amA painful experience of a friend of ours brought this memory back to me. I wrote this poem in 1997 after seeing someone who use to be very important to me. It is melodramatic, of course, but it captures how it felt when someone who I loved and who hurt me badly, then acted like nothing had happened.
Lunch with a Ghost
Smiling
You smile as if you do not know
You greet me as if I were alive
As if it had only been yesterday
Talking to me
Telling me about your life since...
Since my death.
A ghost
You are having lunch with a ghost
I have been invisible to you for years
And now you talk to me as if I were alive
Didn’t you know?
How could you not know?
I am dead.
Haunting
I have haunted you for years
Whispers in the day and wailing by night.
And you couldn’t hear me
Or could you?
How could you ignore
My death?
Smiling
I am smiling at you across the table
Through my ghostly lips
And you know what I am thinking?
I am wondering
When you will tell me why
You killed me.
Remembering
I remember my life before
I remember my death
How my whole life crumbled
Not one day
But agonizingly, slowly
Dying by inches.
Alone
No you didn’t do it alone
You had a lot of help from others
From the liars and the lovers
Who all turned their backs
But yours was the power
The death blow.
Power
How did you come to have so much?
The power to destroy me
Soul bonded to mine
The power to feel
The power to heal
Or to kill.
Smiling
At your old dead friend
Whose life crumbled three years ago
Crushed by your silence
A ghost still waiting
To understand why
You killed me?
Lunch with a Ghost
Smiling
You smile as if you do not know
You greet me as if I were alive
As if it had only been yesterday
Talking to me
Telling me about your life since...
Since my death.
A ghost
You are having lunch with a ghost
I have been invisible to you for years
And now you talk to me as if I were alive
Didn’t you know?
How could you not know?
I am dead.
Haunting
I have haunted you for years
Whispers in the day and wailing by night.
And you couldn’t hear me
Or could you?
How could you ignore
My death?
Smiling
I am smiling at you across the table
Through my ghostly lips
And you know what I am thinking?
I am wondering
When you will tell me why
You killed me.
Remembering
I remember my life before
I remember my death
How my whole life crumbled
Not one day
But agonizingly, slowly
Dying by inches.
Alone
No you didn’t do it alone
You had a lot of help from others
From the liars and the lovers
Who all turned their backs
But yours was the power
The death blow.
Power
How did you come to have so much?
The power to destroy me
Soul bonded to mine
The power to feel
The power to heal
Or to kill.
Smiling
At your old dead friend
Whose life crumbled three years ago
Crushed by your silence
A ghost still waiting
To understand why
You killed me?