No shit, Sherlock.
Once a thing is gone
It’s a rare day when it will THEN
Make a reply.
Maybe the gone- thing will send you a letter
A postcard
Or give you a call on the phone
These days it might text you from the beyond
Or send you a Facebook message
But gone is gone
And you can question it all you like
But its answer will be on its own terms
If it says anything
It will be because the gone-thing
Has one last thing to say.
Author: erainbowd
I charge thee speak.
To charge
To charm
To conjure
To funnel all command and requirement
Into the jolt of an electrical impulse
This is what I will summon
To hear your voice.
Speak, speak.
Urging words
From a mouth that has yet to speak
Urging sound
And maybe something that will reassure us all
Of this thing’s humanity.
A dog could bark
A bird could sing
But if this thing could speak, can speak,
We will all breathe more easily.
Before it does
It conjures visions of a hell full of unintelligible sound
Of howling and gurgling and grunting.
If it can not conjure words
Our life after this life
Will send us so far from all we’ve learned –
That we will be nothing but the pain we knew
When we lived.
Sound strung to sound
Like beads of things so horrible they can’t be named
Strung together with the thread of the memory.
Stay.
One word
With roots
With pleading
With chains
With seduction
With hope
With anticipation
With command
With leash
With pointing
With soft caress
With collar
With head tilt
With its opposite
Wrapped up in it like a moth.
See, it stalks away.
Stalk
Like a stem?
Like a stalker in the night?
How did these words come to mean the same?
A stalk could not stalk
It could only sway
And certainly could not stalk away.
It is offended.
How does a ghost demonstrate offense?
Does he throw up his hands and say “Ach!”?
Does he open his mouth and gasp
Before stalking away?
In ghost stories, the kind wherein you can’t see them,
Just their antics,
They will slam doors
Or shut off lights, nay, flash them.
They will rock your bed
Bang your pots and pans
And walk the floor, making floorboards creak
When there’s no one home.
But how does one see offense in the ephemeral face
Of a phantom?
What helps a person read offense in a spirit face?
And what was said that would suggest it might be offended?
The mention of heaven?
Being charged to speak, when in life, this spirit could be commanded by no one?
Having one’s body addressed in lieu of one’s self?
Marcellus, how do you know?
By heaven I charge thee, speak.
Invoking the powers of the skies
Calling on the authority of sun
Of moon
Of stars
Of blue
Of black
Of the patterns that curve, sparkling in circles
Of clouds
Of color that goes on and on and up
And across
Of cycle
And eternity
And whatever rests within it
If the will of what is above
Can not call down the rain
Or your voice from your body,
Who knows what will?
What art thou that usurpest this time of night, Together with that fair and warlike form In which the majesty of buried Denmark Did sometimes march?
Together with your form,
Alongside the structure of this body,
What else is there?
As a matter of course, most of us pour our spirits
Into the body
The form tends to hold the soul.
It tends to.
Now, we have a question –
Could someone (or something)
Find its way into the shape of a person
(even the shape of a king)
and march it around as if it were a suit?
If it did, to whom would you direct the question?
The body? Or that which is within the body?
Or both together
Making the singular plural.
Speak to it, Horatio.
Maybe if I say it one more time
Maybe last time he didn’t hear me
Maybe my words got swallowed up in the hollow of the night and vanished into nothingness
Maybe if I change the position of my head
Or if I say it directly in his ear
He will understand
Or if I make sure he’s looking at me this time
He’ll speak
I can’t insist
I can’t compel or entreat
So I will retreat.
It would be spoke to.
There’s an active expectancy
A waiting that radiates outward
This thing exudes anticipation,
What will you say?
There it is, not doing a thing
Just being.
But simultaneously
It is, by its very stillness
Soliciting action
Sparking words
Eliciting a response
An expectant stillness
A pregnant nothingness
A dreaming void.
The Hamlet Project 