Ghosting, James Renshaw

 

Ghosting                                             Ghost

 

Hey                                                                                 Hey

    . . .                   . . .

 

I thought we could make it                  I couldn’t bear the thought

an idea formed from intimate               this idea made from vague

stop-motion pictures, brief initiatives would unravel me,

snaps of the blind flash                       would lace us in the blind

fiction, a coming of age                       flash fiction, reeling films

text-to-speech in motion, then out of speechless emotions,

coffee with conversations,                   coffee stains painting us

eyes; we’re parting our lips exchanging breaths; eyes

     opened, closed, opened, closed, opened, closed,

and the world can be real –                 and the world can’t be real –

 

our sudden escalations                       this I know will escalate

to nowhere. Or if that                           to nowhere. Or if that

     somewhere was a place I’d be sure that I’d be

for pixel parks – hidden                       safe from myself – hidden

in the flood of Wi-Fi signals                 in a tangle of Wi-Fi signals,

to the sent histories, lingering              bogged down in the cache,

with scents dug into my bed ruminating over fragments

sheets, and memoirs of a spoon          left indented on the outskirts

      indented on the right – of your physical life.

you were melding with me                   How could we materialise

in the middle of it all.                           in the middle of it all,

 

I was morphing our existence,             complacent in this existence –

now knowing you after knowing me knowing after you knowing now

you as hexadecimal. Maybe               of these consequential infinities?

it’s me who’s locked within                 I don’t want to barricade you

the handset infinite regress, within my firewalls and 4G

        here where we shift out fortresses of cybernetics

the bones of our conscience – connected to the white skins

I didn’t know we could                        and shuffling flesh. I can’t

when we siphon fluid words                bleed the veins of my words –

from our thumbs and risk it                 I’ll pour until our voices turn

   in some level of purgatory dust in purgatory drought,

decay in digital permanence.              rotting under our fleeting guise.

 

But deletion is permanence, or            But deletion is fleeting, and

a paradox when a ghost                      freedom when a human

kisses me, holds me,                         holds me, kisses me, takes

leaves a spoon indented                      my soul and indents it

on the right edge of the bed, in the outskirts of his life,

and any further traces                         and any further traces

         found in ideas formed of lost ideas made shared

from these cold stop-motion                from warm, vague initiatives

pictures and brief snaps from              unravelled in these films from

the blind flash fiction is                       the blind flash fiction, is

           framed for a profile, framed for a memory,

empty and without a name.                 locked away without a body.

 

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