There are a lot of things that can be done to a soul.
Just because it cannot die
Doesn’t make it invulnerable.
It can shrink
It can shrivel
It can ache.
My friend took a job on a cruise ship
Which pays him a living wage
With which he can support his son
But, he says, his soul dies a little every day.
If it were to die and die like that
In little bits, in pieces
It may be that it could all but disappear
Or go into hiding and a person could
Go to his grave
With the sense that he’s been abandoned by his immortal self,
That this death happened some time ago
While he was busy trying to survive.
I’d like to believe that the soul
Is like one of those little grow-in-water creatures.
It comes in a little capsule and expands
When you immerse it in water
But if you let it dry out, it shrinks again
Into a dull, brittle object, unidentifable in its shape
And one could think all has been lost
But if you put it in enough water, it will expand again.

Let’s see. I have this little bit of money;
I could buy a pin
Or I could buy Hamlet’s life.
The pin, I could use, you know, to hold things together –
Hamlet’s life, well,
He might as well keep it –
I have no use for it.
I’ve got my own stitched up life here,
Pieced together with thread and tape,
Tied up with string and the occassional pin.

Rats. Rodents of almost any size
(Chipmunks and squirrels, the possible exception) Inside or out. Big or small.
Snakes. Garden, desert or tropical.
Drowning.
Losing my hearing.
Losing a loved one.
Getting hit by a car.
Ridicule.
Embarrassment.
Humilitaion.
Ignominy.
Homelessness.
Headstands.

When it washes me over in waves of adulation
Then, its easy to follow.
When it stetches my imagination up, up and out
When it leaves my muscles aching from so much compassioned use
When the challenges are the creative fun kind
When it gives back and back even more than it takes
When it’s right on the beam
Right on the fire
Right in the center of the delight
Then it’s easy to follow.
When it runs so fast I can’t keep up and my feet are bleeding
From the stones and glass in the road
When the wind is biting
The climate inhospitable
The company hostile
The obstacles too big
The gaps too wide
The storm too violent –
When it feels like a thousand hands are holding me back
Whispering “Stay. Relax. Be comfortable.”
When there’s no hope, no promise, no assurance –
I’ll still follow it then.

Staring at the ghost of someone I know
Having begged it to speak to me,
Having watched it make signs,
I would wonder if it could speak.
I would wonder if death has taken the voice
If not the body, or the appearance of the body,
The outline, the hologram, the shadow of the body.
I can see that it still moves
That it is expressive and life-like
But it doesn’t breathe anymore, does it?
Can it speak with no breath?
Death must mean the loss of something if it’s not the body, it might be the voice.

Tell us the instructions
Give us the list of commands
The steps we need to follow.
It would be so much eaiser
Than this wandering path of life.
We hack our way through the weeds
Foot by foot
Unable to see farther than directly in front.
We long for someone to paint a trailblaze for us
To signal where to go and what to do.
We feel like we will never arrive anywhere
But of course
There we are
Somewhere
Doing something.

This is my favorite misunderstood Shakespeare word.
Because it has “where” in it and because
We think a woman on a balcony should be
Searching for her man, we think it is a fancy form of “where.”
If you tried to understand the two words in wherefore, you wouldn’t
Get to “why.” This same thing happened to me
While I was living in Italy. My Italian
Was improving, I was starting to be able to understand
Basic questions and could figure out how
To understand the bigger ones. Then someone
Asked me, “Come mai. . .”
Several people began questions with “Come mai” and while
I understood all the words that followed “come mai”
And “come” and “mai,” I was completely flummoxed
By “Come mai.” It translates literally as “How never.”
I was struggling with sentences like
“How never are you in Italy?”
“How never did you choose Florence?”
“How never are you looking so confused?”
Once I got back to Italian class,
I asked for some help with this construction
And discovered that “Come mai” was simply “why.”

The ghost doesn’t answer.
Not yet.
The question is posed
Over and over
Rephrased, restated
But he won’t answer
Until he is alone with his son.
What would he say if he didn’t wait to speak?
“Go get Hamlet” or “I will speak to none but my son”
But nothing is more eloquent than saying
Nothing at all.

What thoughts are beyond the reaches of the soul?
What can we think that our souls cannot encompass?
Isn’t the whole idea of a soul that it should be infinite?
That it should reach to eternity? Both backward and forward, the soul
Extends in all directions
But a dead body in armor sees the moon
And even the soul loses its elasticity.

I was resting quietly.
The ceremonies over.
The royal corpse, draped in riches, covered in tapestries and fine cloth was resting in my belly.

I thought, “That could not have gone better!”

I’ve heard stories of sepulchres
Filled up with snot nosed half-noblemen or dingy knights.
My friend down the alley had a bishop in his belly
That was so filled with ulcerous secrets that the marble around him started to crack.
I thought I’d gotten so lucky.
I sat peacefully content to be digesting such a magnificent morsel –
The choicest of cuts,
The king!

I had a few weeks as the celebrity of the cemetery.
Everyone was deferring to me and I had a sort of
Self satisfied smile on my face at all times.
Then one day, about a week ago,
My belly started rumbling. Something
Was turning around in there and it wasn’t the worms.
It was kicking and failing. I was burping up little bubbles of distasteful decay,
Until one day, the roiling in my innards became such
That everything from my belly rose
Into my gorge and before I knew what was happening,
King and contents were on the ground before me
With my jaws sealed up tight again
As if nothing had happened.