Ghost Lantern
The interior ghosted, or he who ghosted himself, the inside of his skull gone: the inside nocturne a series of dark memories he can no longer remember. Things knock out certain people, take out the insides of their once beautiful mercurial heads; those with the undaunted imaginations, the fearless courage; those who once climbed from valley to the highest mountain top to crow, to leap; yet, one day, something terrible crashes, something catches up, the light goes out, completely; a mystery that no one can unravel or claim; we, the lovers, can only witness the frame, the hollow rusty metal frame, the cusp of the ceramic socket, the lamp no longer a lamp. Yet the strange red petals, the bougainvillea, slowly brocaded up, slightly aflutter around the erect pole of what barely remains of a man’s body, a man’s memory; the tears & sorrow steadfast for Johanna, steadfast for the disappearance - the brother, the son, the lover. The petals, the tears, the unbearably lovely tears.
(In memory, in part, for my brother, Christopher).
21st Street, between Guerrero & Valencia, San Francisco