The Ghost Arbiter

That Past

shimmers over my waking vision

bright now

there now

ever swaying with my hazy eyes

I am pleading with the past before That Past

somehow to avert what’s passed

sway

I am turning in That Past

to beg its future while the That Past can still be saved

oh sway to one, sway to the other

they are unheeding walls

would that I had never gone

would that I had come back

but though I did go I never left and have always been interceding with myselves

pacing in step with your golden ghost

sway

Shimmering dust

Inhale chiffon light:

yellow, gold, ochre, grey

Walls

Looming rich mahogany with waterfalling silken skin,

Sorrowed chins tip ever back to face off their dead silent twin

The golden ghost comes, the ghost arbiter by his side

He strides between the temporal ranks

Golden brighthair streaming, he is slipping from my leaving love

Glistening through thickening whisper-specks, I am slipping on my leaving love

SWAY.

Chins tipping ever backwards CHURNING SNAPPING into spinning

taking STRIKING SPLINTERED IMAGE KNIFING through the liquid mind

chiffon CRUNCHING CANKERED collapse repealing something in the leaving

but you’re still waiting as the flaxenhair forever as the faithful fair who grasps the future as it rusts–

and dark now

here now

and though I do not see him

I know still brightly burns the ghost

flickering between the walls who never close their eyes

walls that shirk and dare the other, both of me, not to go or to come back

my past before That Past faces off its future

trembling between myselves, I beseech them one by one

to undo what is now done