"Do You Believe in Ghosts?" by John C. Mannone, Frequent Contributor

Do You Believe in Ghosts?

John C. Mannone

Are they ectoplasmic goo leaking from some

inter-dimensional seismic rift? It’s nature’s fault,

its consciousness conjuring an electric you.

Maybe they’re altered states of ethereal madness

or manic illusions of disembodied schizoid voices.

Who ya gonna call? Aykroyd yells,

the local exorcist or psychobabble-ist?

Perhaps Ghostbusters, Incorporated

to capture the un-corporated (hardly holy),

but a few are Marvelous-comic spooks:

friendly slap-stickin’ slimy green blobs

or airhead sheets with lashless Lulu eyes

and whitewashed smiles with oval mouths

that blurt the boos, without the blues.

Best therapy yet

from a static screen. Electromagnetic bliss

of white noise hiss—electrons rastering

without a trace, the ghastly ghostly images.

Are they the departed that lurk

in theater balconies—the type B shadows? Perhaps

they’re ionized anomalies in plasma physics labs,

or balled-up sheets of charge, a lightning

falling from the thunderclouds

as glowing goblins of the dark

or rivulets of rain condensed from vapors

snaking from Medusa’s head

dangling

on the belt of Perseus, along with Algol,

the star of ghouls, rolling in its light,

shimmering the summer midnight.

Did they appear from pages long possessed

with Greek mythology or Babylon astrology

and roam the gypsy skies? I suspect

the only real ghosts are those in closets

with the skeletons, occasionally rattled

and ready to haunt you.

Poet’s Notes: “Do You Believe in Ghosts?” was a fun poem to write. Its fast paced rhythms sustain the tension in the poem, which tries to “define” the ghosts. This poem also serves as an example of how a cliché at the end of the poem (skeletons in the closet) can be finessed with syntax and the turn of the line.