If I Became a Ghost

Just so we’re clear on this, I DON’T believe in ghosts; specters of the dead cursed forever to lonely haunts. Besides what I actually believe, there is overwhelming evidence of the existence of such beings, on the internet at least. Literature also abounds with stories of phantom armies, ghost trains, phantom ships and even ghost animals. Remember “Casper the Friendly Ghost”? Or how about The Flying Dutchman, made so famous by “The Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise?

No doubt ghosts,real or not, continue to fascinate the collective conscious of the human race and we may never hear enough about them. Maybe this stems from an innate desire to believe that there is more to life, to us, than the bodies we presently inhabit. That death is not the end. That the soul, if there be such a thing, “goes on”.

Enough theorizing.  Ghosts, like all things, are not exempt from the poet’s ever wandering mind. The work below was inspired by more than a few episodes of the popular TV show Supernatural and borrows a lot of its style from John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Try not to freak out too much!

 

If I became a ghost

I would soar with lightning rapidity

To the peak of the highest mountain

From there behold all the earth

Spread out beneath me.

Then I would jump

And let fall with hideous gravitational attraction-

 

If my soul be truly immortal

Or truly dead, to Death repulsive,

I then would sink to the deepest deep

and wrap myself in utter blackness and waves

Behold what the Almighty hath hid

With kingly stature and highest disdain

Walk over the valleys and plains of the deep.

 

I would eye wonders and treasures man yet living has never known

For a horse would be the whale,

In Poseidon fashion I would charge and stir up the waters

Then, with terrible fury erupting, like a woman scorned, or as the volcanoes of old-

with all enraged water hot at my heels-

I would blanket the coast

and sound like thunder through the raging tempest

 

Invisible, I would dine with statesmen and presidents

and recline with celebrities of the highest renown

At the self same time, through dreams as vivid as daylight

engage the most scholarly minds

and from Spirits learn of knowledge to mortal man forbid.

Through the eons I would endure, seated sure on my throne of all wisdom, all knowledge

All would be the power.

 

And when the sun darkens before my eyes,

When Eternity begins to look the despised enemy

I would fly into space

Into the blackest blackhole fling myself

Though the fall last countless years and the abyss seem bottomless

Yet finally I would die

and into nothingness pass my immortal jewel.