In thinking about that ghost language we seem to have been engaging in for a while (my previous poem tracked it down to 2020), what came to mind was one of those household ghosts of the quotidian we run into once in a while and mistake them to be part of the material world. This one was particularly pernicious as it turned my own material being into a ghostly presence that had nothing to do with me, but thankfully by April (the month I think of as the month of poetry) it did dissipate.
A Figment of Thy Imagination
Should I thank Thee
for making me
a figment of Thy imagination
sipping an unknown drink
on an uncherished shore
unburdened by any past
released of the weight
of identity
moved across
the checkerboard
of Thy whimsical mind?
Should I appreciate
having been turned to pigment
in Thy painter’s palette
for those bolder strokes
in imaginary sea -land-sky
scapes
escaping, scraping
the surface and the emergent?
Should I have been alarmed
by Thy arrival
in a bottle
buoyed by tempest:
fateful message or jinn?
Since Thou favorst place over time
and showest great consideration
for the predicament of eels
their continual transformation
their belabored voyaging
between sweet waters and sea
may I assume Thee to be under the spell
of the contour-vague chimaeras
shapeshifting in Thy mind
their enchantress’ lack of core?
Or should I chuck it all to poetry
and its twisted sense of justice
and though April be
the cruellest month of all
should I consider sparing
Thee the Molotov?
3 april 2022
Cover art: A figment of the Imagination, Painting by Tara Baden.