They Say That All the Ghosts Come Out on Halloween

I remember how it all began
Halloween, you were Princess Diana
Lately wrecked but walking still
In your tattered, bloodstained dress
Horrid and hardly pretty at all
Except for the short curve of your back
Down its length I followed (you)
And through room after room
With my eyes and within my mind
That night, wherever, and ever since

For me that evening you were Julie
As I was used to seeing her
(And hoped to see you then)
In the morning, rising out of bed
Or in the moonlight, stumbling, drunk
(As we all had become again)
Dress falling off her bare shoulders
Her short, naked frame standing
For a moment, still, before me

(For me, nude, as she liked to be
Underneath her white dress suit
Impure, demure) then laying on the bed
Yes, stocky, boyish even, she was
With her short, spunky, reddish bob
But next to me, her egg-white skin
Warm and soft always against me
Was everything I ever wanted
When I was wanting (wanting)

But you, your hair is longer grown
Drifting down onto your shoulders some
Falling off, then down some more
Like spaghetti held half above a plate
It folds, then lays upon the billiards table
Covering all but your determined eyes
But if your hair by my eyes intenser stare
How like by a fork were twisted
If the flaxen veil were carefully lifted
Your bare white neck by my hands
Would still be undiscovered

But with more gentle brushes of my eyes
I have known the doubts within your mind
Have heard the murmurs of your heart
Have felt the leaning of your hips
Never tasting your thin, blush lips
While every re-enactment of the day
Is a dream in which I can remember
Imagining just touching, (with my eyes)
Or gently brushing (kissing)

Or if your hair spun everywhere
Round me like a silken tent
With the moving world shuttered out
And the moonlit night webbed tightly in
With just you and I and stars inside
And in your white and bloodstained dress
You wrecked and wrapped yourself around me
Yes, that I could never dare imagine,
Nor ever hope to (wanting) dream

So Halloween I threw it up
(And all the night, I threw it up again)
I wrecked and wrapped myself around
A stained and egg-white toilet bowl
And ever since, my furtive mind
Has warped and twisted itself around
(Like a fork, your hair, a veil, lifted)
Thoughts impure and purest white
What is wrong? What is right?
Because as I held myself half above the rim
I couldn’t see my own reflection (inside)
In the dim, pink, stinking water

Or did I see held in the depths
Falling, sinking down, down
Falling out from deep inside
The afterbirth of my desire
A cord of hope, regret, love, despair
(The waving strands of your light,
Your brown, your falling hair)
Yearning, churning there outside myself
(So pure and yet not white)
As I imagine your shoulders, your back,
Your long and silken hair
(Skeins of hope spun in dreams)
Spurning and turning
Then swirling away

9/30/98 Rev. 10/1, 10/3, & 10/29