Apparition Poems

#1596

I was talking to a dude
I knew from school, I
said, “I see the levels
from sleeping with
psychopaths, that’s
how I get them,” levels
were (I meant) places
between souls where
spaces open for metaphor,
“but when I carry them
over to my bed, every
psychopath levels me.”


#1605

This killer wears a tight
black shirt, glasses. There
are noises of digging happening
from the bathroom, she’s in
bed, hands over her mouth,
frozen upset. Then, the mirror
is dug through, his face appears
in a wall with a square cut in it.
The face is there, hovers there,
just sits, it has the promise of
action that kills. This is the
tableau I watch every time
I’m in the bathroom while
she’s in bed. And smile.


#1625

The "I" that writes cannot be
(he told us, perched on a hill of
flowers which he crushed, but, of
course, incompletely, and not all of
them at once) strictly for-itself as it
has no substance: a student walked

up, pricked his forearm (the back side
of it) with a small razor, he cringed but
only briefly, leaning forward so that a
row of buttercups doused him yellow.
The "I" that writes has a relationship
that is very much for itself, but it has

a strictly independent existence, so that
what constitutes a human "I" has no
meaning for it. Now, you need to know
this: I was not the student with the razor,
but I supplied the razor to the student
that cut the professor's forearm, but you

will never know how I got it, or why.