19. the ghosts and zombies of our dreams

 

 

in this version they walk | as if walking would move them

they perform | as if they were | real

they have the motions of people | their expressions

languid | but somewhat still | as if of a hardening plastic

in this light | we cannot tell | if they breathe

if their breathing’s too shallow | to show | if they

express their breathing well | if they have told us well

enough | of the breathing they experience | it is

as if | they have to tell us | for us to know

but we already knew | they spoke | they spoke to us

we knew | we merely | (it was not our fault)

thought they were not telling | not telling us

telling us the truth | not telling it all | how

were we supposed to know | we had no idea

they could breathe | or if their walking was | an illusion

like emancipation | or the Voting Rights Act

the world | you see | is complex | we can not know

so we have to guess | it is our strongest weapon

it is not always right | it does not always shoot true

but it is all we have | we have nothing else to try

 

in the previous version | we never saw them

we had no idea they existed among us | at that time

we could look right at them | but see only the brick wall

behind them | we imagine they had walked among us

yet we could not prove it | they were diaphanous

vaporous | a friend once stared at them for hours

only to discover | he had finished reading a novel

that they had disappeared | later he ran into one

in the street | almost knocked him down | but

he never saw him | couldn’t see him | didn’t feel

the impact of his body | against the other

claimed he had run into a sheet | drying on a line

to force it back into the form it must take | maybe

they are invisible because | they take on the shapes

of what they stand before | a sheet drying outside

a brick wall before the shots are fired | a covey of

quail roused from the scrub | then the shots

he couldn’t even see where they hit | how could

he know they were there | blood appeared on the

ground | but it wasn’t red | and it came from nowhere

 

in the final version | it is so much as if they are here

as if they seem like us | they have voices and breath comes

out of them as if they are breathing | breathing in

the air | breathing out | the words | and they are

saying something | sounds that seem to be words

and these sounds are ardent | strident even

angry sometimes | they seem to be scared of | something

but we have no way | we do not have any | way

to know what they are saying | or why | they are saying

it | but they seem so real | one of us said she had

touched them | once | and they were warm | as if

blood were running through them | but where did

they get the blood | when did they get these bodies

why are they talking | we cannot figure it out

we had a meeting | we set down rules | we still

don’t know how they talk | do they have mouths

do they speak | where have they suddenly come from

who are they | how did they get here | what do they

want | what are they asking us | have they ever seen

the sun rise in the morning | did they feel that