Beyond The Bog Of Ghosts And Dreams

The Line Along The Sea

As the shoreline disappears into the waves,

I can see you standing there with a red shovel
tucked behind your ear, audibly

counting the seashells from the ruins of
some lost civilization, mostly based around a
sandcastle economy.

Your kingdom, your kingdom, your kingdom
for a seahorse.

The Dreamer

Standing on the shore with a yellow lunch box
as so much of the island’s history
disappears under the water and unfamiliar fishes,

you realize that maybe all your dreams
are finally coming true.

Seabirds

The seabirds talk to fish sticks as they watch us
pass on poetry to the next generation.

Cupping their hands in salt water and hoping to catch
some magic and fish, maybe even bread crumbs.

Reflections

When I search among the special things
collecting dust across the secrets of your soul,

I do not find myself reflected in your eyes.

What is this mountain of paperwork
that you must climb up on an easel to paint

the sun another shade of sealing wax?

Watercolors

As the unseen sun falls into the trap of the horizon,
mermaids of our dreaming, pass out below.

Our union of a nest of freedom,
painted in a sea of shades to hold our eyes.

Prosperity and flyers, poking across the surface of the world,

whenever there is no land in sight.

Red White And Blue

The structure of this inspiration
already looked like it was
ready to continue folding
napkins, for a party

with bold lighting inside
the underlining shadows
that sink your mind
along the golden spire
of your battleship.

Just before you walked
into these words, this
ending was
already written outside
of holding to your
strange memories below
the surface of the sea.

Extra Space

When stepping through a doorway just beyond
your windowsill, remember to check all
surfaces for cracks and floorboards.

Broken things can represent the extra space
between the worlds, because frankly
that space has no real desire to represent itself.

Floorboards are less problematic but even the
immaculate ones tend to get selected as
unofficial portals to all things magical and odd.

If you’re planning to cast a spell on me,
I left you instructions in the blue room, third drawer
from the top, in the mahogany monstrously
that lurks under the most ostentatious mirror
that I have ever seen.

Where The Market Waits

Invisible phantasms, otherwise seeking carefully
and thoroughly confused about the state of the nation,
glide smoothly and effortlessly into your arms.

This staircase goes to nowhere but the shattered
poverty of myself, as you cast around in nowhere land,
rummaging through lost hallways out of doors.

Every road leads to home, and every door back to the
market, where the ghosts of your discarded thoughts
play dominoes below the hanging fruit baskets.

Balconies And Extra Seating

As it appears that your spruced up exterior looks mostly the same,
to keep the integrity of the building from trying to hide out under
the glass staircases, while also

bringing about positive change, your elements are back to back
from the original plans. Now announcing your six elements:

Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Juggling, and Lemons,

as they say, when life gives you lemons, hand them
to me and I’ll juggle them.

Hey Look A Gift Horse

You are pretending not to look the gift horse in the eyes,
or is it llamas that spit at you?

But the packages keep arriving at your door. Each stepping
across the footbridge into your painting of the living room.

At first I tried stacking them in the shape of an elephant,
but you claimed my masterpiece looked more like a horse.

And yeah, I can kind of see that if I squint. So,
you do like horses, right?

Maybe We Should Take The Elevator

The grand staircase that once upon a time
connected up to the ruins of this failed
undertaking of their vast relationship,

was left in place by time and birdcages
to better allow these beautiful song-wrought wings
of hard-working musical instruments,

quick access to the symphony of lost emotions.
They can sometimes be found out loud
practicing below.

Quagmire Rendezvous

The bog wraith looked across the table at the bog witch, Lucy,
and observed as she carefully sipped her bubbly pink tea.

Cottage Cheese

Your body of books reads into breadcrumbs
as you cast a spell on cheese.

Nobody wants to eat your screeching mozzarella,

as that’s what lost children are for.

Astronaut Humor

Q: Why do astronauts drink hibiscus tea?

A: Because it helps them with weight loss.

I wake up every morning to the same joke,
and it still isn’t funny.

Some days I kill myself. Coffee,
water, salt, alcohol, chocolate bars.
books.

So many ways into the night.

If only. But the day must go on.

At least being a ghost isn’t too bad,
and it resets at midnight.

Wait no, being a ghost
is actually really annoying.

And I don’t reset till midnight. Sigh.

I really hate this time loop.

Juggling Yellow Scarves Below A Sky Of Horses

Your fancy tricks cannot be seen by mortal eyes.
For doesn’t every army hold a sword’s outline
up against the unseen sun?

To crawl below the galloping march of time.

It doesn’t matter. We will ride.

Your beacon’s light hides out behind
the mangled shouts and cries of flags and war.

It doesn’t matter. We will ride.

I know not what tomorrow brings.

A blanket expanse of wasted space,

a tall twisted realm of carnivorous trees,
the red rolling hills of hopeless bleak despair,

sunlight, rain, the very very
bright cliffs of alarm, panic, and agitation,

the slippery face of a glacier with
deep blue ancient eyes?

It doesn’t matter. We will ride.

Great hoofprints leave the dirt,
the mud, the dust of all lost enemies behind.

They stitch their fallen dreams

as our horses set behind the fallen shapes
of the broad horizons.

It doesn’t matter. We will ride.

Nightshade

Several varieties of nightshade
have been used in the production
of the movies you observe.

Thrown about during a celebration, such as
an office party. Related to the potato and
the potato pancake.

You can use it in chamber music,
but only if you skip breakfast and or lunch.

When the confetti drops, don’t let it
touch your face.

Star Ingredients

Loops of glowing hydrogen, seen hanging out with ghosts
and glazed hibiscus shortbread cookies.

Your vibrant glaze, sifts through the powdered sugar
into the mixing bowl

left hanging over the solar limb. Listening as
a haunting melody shines through

with flowery undertones.

Wrap in parchment paper and enjoy.

Codex

Even though I said
that you could read

any book in this library,
this particular volume

of techniques should
not be read by anyone

until you have
categorized the

roses, and the lilies,
and the feet,

with such great regards
to quality

and length for
long enough

for some seasoning
to have taken the place

of both cooking and
garden vegetables,

fruit, herbs, or flowers.

Everything Must Go

A new companion is running away from here,
a brown crystal to be exactly right.

Bigger than if I could shudder,
shake, dance, drill, dynamite, the moon,
while my strange soundbites of
everything, surrounds me in my grave.

Although actually, it might have been blue.

However, I know where I am now.

Watching the sun set over a field of
pink, red, white, hibiscus flowers.

There is no real way to the other side where the
animals that often appear in stories come from. Where do
all the animals that often appear in stories come from?

I notice strange diagrams, but actually, it is probably
just some cracks appearing in our trusted third party.

I am a rock, well a crystal rock space thing, maybe? In the gates of this
moment, I decided to just fart heat emissions and feedback loops.

But on the plus side, some kind of language group, as if
I wonder how I can talk to you. Don’t worry,

I will never sell your data to third parties, and the chamber pots
are roughly twenty by twenty-one,

with shattered coffins floating over our heads.

It may take awhile, but the racket is today.
With millions of new answers, leave those thoughts for
another day.

Well, this is new, and yep, I checked, so where am I going now?

First, let’s each, on separate lines, vote for the away team.
As everything just stopped in your line of sight,
such beauty.

A peculiar vision, exclusive to myself, or maybe
something out of the descriptions of a book.

You reach out for the orchard but fall back.

Old haunted pumpkin trees, skipping the moments in between.
Not that there was anything to see, so type here to search
when looking for answers.

I wonder if that’s a ghost, but who better to say? l’m
like a thief who got his prize of personal relationships and hygiene
estimated at $369 million, or something. But yeah,
vacationing with giants sure beats the never ending darkness.

We never stopped for the flowers, placed to each side
of the silence I’ve never heard. That day the light appeared,
as the noise got louder. A whole lot of sound,
moving like something that I distractedly took inside.

As I distractedly take all of this in, who would be your
retelling of the truth? Words that vanish without the charm of borders.

Lines to draw the spaceships in between.

You cannot be combined with any other offer.

Even on the other side.

The Photograph

Riffling through the papers on his desk,
looking for answers.

You ignore the confetti from the office party

(small pieces of colored paper,
dancing on the conversation starter
of the office air conditioner)

happening all about you, that you weren’t
invited to, because it’s not like they’d ever expect
you to show up anyway, you discover
an unsealed manila envelope.

It contains a single blurry photograph
of a plant with red berries.

On the back side of the photo, his handwriting
while slightly more illegible than you remember,
is clearly still written in his scrawl.

“The password was obviously Nightshade, but I
should have realized it was a trap. When I reached
the chamber I saw everything, but it would not
let me try to forget. Somebody is about to spill juice
on all my documents. Likely Fred.

Goodbye.”

You look up from his words without an understanding.
All about you the party rages like the sea.

Fred spills juice on all the documents,
and when you’ve finished cleaning everything up,
the photograph has disappeared.

His words are gone and you are all alone.

Underneath The Chamber Of Your Heart

Somewhere lost underneath
the chamber of your heart,

while you dance around the universe,

everyone keeps throwing confetti
and smiling.

Real Magic

In my not so humble opinion,
real magic is when you stitch together
the piercing cold analysis and heart
of a glacier, with the welcoming warmth
of a long sought beacon of hope.

Also puppies, and everything
small, cute, and adorable.

A Song Of Hand Puppets

Because the possibilities all around you are this enormous glacier that
waits for someone else amidst the snow and glacier ice, burying all the valleys,
grand mountains, and monuments so far below the surface of your thoughts.

Whenever some lonely person dancing around a beacon site in their pajamas,
pauses long enough to notice that another beacon, somewhere far off in the distance,
is on fire, they ignite their own and just like that, the signal is passed along.

Messages might whisper to you in the comfort of your borrowed home,
that once upon a time, fire and smoke were the only known ways of sending
urgent messages across super duper long distances. But not anymore,
mostly, because everyone is watching.

Some people watch their children. Some people watch the stars.
A watched pot never boils, they say. What are you really watching for?

The spirits of courage and information are watching over you.

Softly singing of possible invasions.

And as you watch the children stitch together brightly-colored hand puppets
out of the memories of cloth, a forgotten chain of gossip carries out
this news across the hidden mountain tops.

You put down your telescope and wonder if maybe

it is finally time to apply yourself to learning how to sing.

To Cross The Silky Sheets Of A Ghost Town In Off White Pajamas

To cross the silky sheets of a ghost town in off white pajamas, each noticed footstep from the best of times, recorded by the history of earth and limes and buildings.

For when each feather represents a dream you’ve had, your sketchbook full of memories, a truck, a key, a string of words, alternatively deserted then alive, a postcard with a secret written years ago, by hand, by sand, by shiny stones, some message is abandoned, an abandoned village, castle, town, or city gate.

When you walk through the imaginary and into borders marked by swings and spears and sharper edges, sometimes knives, they shout at you, “one way”, “go right”, “frolic over the stepping stones”, sometimes “airports”, but usually one that contains luggage, packed within a single day.

What village, town, or city gate, you would not pack them in a box like that.

Reserved for kings and paper rags, dollhouses, chocolate, bunny ears, the coat room of a cheap hotel, apples, mangoes, bagels, bread, somersaults, a dancer’s legs from out of state, or somebody else’s slippers.

You would then need to spend your hours dancing though a city, or an abandoned city is an abandoned town, or a city out of citrus fruits and likes, some possibly are fictional but really justifiably substantial moment to be so visibly remaining in somebody else’s slippers, hold, for it might be worth it as you consort with the spirits of the wind and mildly stormy weather.

Converting what was once a pillow proud and soft, silky, lovely, full of snot, into the proper costume of a ghost.

Hold each feather dream, hold on, shaking in the wind, fluttering forever far, gusts of memory, you’ll never gather up them all, one mouse even, story poem, a giant goose, the feather that hatched the golden egg, like words really.

Retracted thoughts, walking backwards on a trail of breadcrumbs, just like you might be, bedtime, snacks, haunted houses, chilled pickles, enchanted out of mirrors, a shadow ring, a mushroom king, in somebody else’s slippers.

You would need a notecard or a flying pen in open sky, some memory out of the shapes of noses, smells wishing through the garden roses, hoses counted by the rods of rain, we say “my weather, help us” but then the storms come and we change.

The rising stars catching all the milk cartons, for what do we change into but ourselves, or what does it mean to be a witness when the connection between a saying can explain your ideas in your own words, or must we feel and believe that we have truly changed?

Or, heartache, tragedy, broccoli, salmonella, the familiar pangs of gnawing emotional anguish, grief, typically synonyms, wretched bleak disappearing act of gods when looking into mirrors and sometimes your joys as well, for these are the changes listed on the universal posting as a good friend understands your heartaches as despondency, agony, angst, but sunglasses at the end of the tunnel are a side quest to save the world, if convenient, from misery, sorrow, sadness, torture, torment, despair, woe, misgivings of an insurance salesman standing on the roof with an untrained violinist and an archer with a bow, wondering if the fairies forgot to work all night, maybe shoes and boots just aren’t the same as slippers, one might think that slippers smell like flowers to a fairy but when the honey runs out, well everything without laces has to go.

Speaking to us of changes caused by the moon, the sun, the stars, the space junk orbiting our dreams, pieces of a puzzle map, something out of a cobbler’s workshop, where did all the left socks go, going, gone, gained take off.

That we have truly changed for the grief, anguish, suffering, distress, unhappiness, or that we have truly changed for the anxiety, worry, twinge of triangles, aches, cramp followers, qualms, riddles, scruples, gyms, for all that we have truly changed into someone else’s slippers, the loss or answers or maybe just an absence of someone else wearing this moment, for you could have been a necklace loved in times and out of time, when trying out for slippers, never win.

Also, “of heartache” said the heartbreak to the pain in the fields of hurt down by the river of desolation and darts, and “of heartache” said the sky, after all, another ghost town paints the sky with words.

Your bed appears before your ghost, almost standing, the sounds of walking step about, like dancers of a riverboat of time, some of your footsteps claim to know your name.

Your bed appears as an old hand-painted advertising sign, preserved on a building, a manifest to the living, typically as a nebulous image, sometimes as a hallucination, doppelganger, phantasm, 3rd person present, ghosted past participle, to act as the ghostwriter of your bed’s own emotional relationship with the shapes of noses.

Your bed appears for an extended period of time.

A sign may be kept for its nostalgic appeal, flowers are often given as a sign of affection or simply indifference by the object, constitution, idiosyncrasy, or event indicating the probable presence something else, an occurrence of, for, and, an extended period of time, possessed by someone or something, somehow, in somebody else’s slippers.

In the nighttime, or a kind of excellence of something, an improvement into product quality, quails, typically having brown camouflaged plumage, maybe, as a ghost signs in, the islands above sleep are restless, maybe.

And the islands above sleep, sway, counting on snacks, counting on viewgraphs, counting the hours before you.

And the islands above sleep, blink, searching for something to look for, you are walking through borrowed time, if only you could reach the library of dreams before they set a due date on the reasons for the conditions of the body and the mind such as what typically occur again periodically, repeatedly, repeatedly for several hours every night.

Or maybe, the islands above sleep come and go, come back again, return, come around again, reappear, appear again, flare up, you say “happens again”.

Like how in any other system supplying a public outcry such as transport, communications, demand utilities such as electricity, water, life, chat, a service you can go invisible for because if someone wants to be invisible, then let them be, short, missed, necessary, now, required, wanted, desired, dreamed of, lacking, called for, uncalled for, essential, compulsory, company, obligatory, mandatory, optional, spaghetti socks.

Self-explanatory, really, in the heavens there are sounds above the sea level, crashing waves of us, small windows into street signs lost to time, as you are sleepwalking, a notice of you, maybe like a wanted poster, I don’t really know, but there are passing shadows, I think three count, turning down the spaces between buildings, between people, or their stories, how remembered, all the plaques say, something overhead, just like birds fear, walking in the umbrellas of sleeping binder faces, and it is not their feathers that we fear, but still, each feature dream makes up a wing, singing to the songbirds of surpassing slippers, like bananas slices for exceeding, in excess of the visible, something that doesn’t love a name.

For the hidden conjures an abandoned road into the town, layer, urban area, namesake, defined boundary, local government, generally larger than a village and smaller than a breadbox, city, gate, castle, treason.

As you approach the wall around the world you might start to realize that all those poems we send out into space, they keep drifting away, and now some of the first lines are too far away to really remember, but a continuous area or expanse, free, available, unoccupied, sometimes we say the same word right away but when we get too close without success like saying “fruit” and “orange” we might be doomed to a war of attrition against time, the house always wins.

Endings can be like that too, I think, a workbench, surfboard, horizontal surface tension, table up to too much of the space, words shall live on together and ever in a small space, or parking space, the space between the lines, a wall, something about the likes or dislikes of fairies, a utility pipeline supermarket, slippers.

If a page were a room, what area, volume, so spaciousness, scope, latitude, expansion, legroom, soccer ball, elbows, breach, breakups, new crevasse spirits, chasms, the abyss, time rifts, rats, gapers block, black holes, exactly as expected.

So, please explain extended faces, fairies, fairy familiars, fear, feather dreams, feathers as feature feels, so fictional, ghost fields, a flare of flowers, fluttering flying followers, footstep, footsteps, especially of a skirt or pants, for forever forgotten freedom, a friend from fruits of fully gained garden gate plates, generally you get a ghost, ghosted, another ghostwriter giant given to the golden gods, good goose, good government, much grief, juggling gyms, hallucination, hand-painted hidden history, the heavens hold, horizontal house hotels, hours of houses, your great ideas of idiosyncrasy, if we image, because our insurance into the invisible invisibles, is islands.

An interlude of clapping hands, like a relay race in the final finals, as you cross the line, there might be questions about your hair color, team synergy, how did you learn to run so fast, but nobody cares if you are holding the baton, the curtain falls to twirling mustaches, but the big reveal that this was all just compitition telephone, nothing, maybe the announcer forgot to bring a notecard, for almost alternatively always, the box breach is a breadbox, breadcrumbs, breakups, broccoli, brown, or just a skillet in which the food has become pizza.

Attrition available, away away, back backwards bagels, agony, bananas, because bedtime borders on borrowed boundary lines, dream feathers listed as camouflaged can cartons, castles, towns, buildings gates, catching caused changed changing chasms, cheap chilled chocolate breakups, you say “back backwards bagels”, a citrus city with a conjured cobbler’s hand-painted communications, your company, compulsory, some conditions may apply, connection to the universe, a consort constitution, contains the sounds of footsteps, maybe try crashing into a dancer’s dancing darts, so convenient really, in somebody else’s slippers.

You don’t remember what the other side of the word looks like.

You don’t remember what the other side of the city looks like.

You don’t remember what the other side of the room looks like.

You don’t remember everything exactly exceeding expectations, but maybe your luggage makes mandatory mangoes manifest, and legroom is justifiably kept strictly under lock and key, for sure, disappearing dislikes into dollhouses doesn’t necessarily doom us all, and your costume could count as an abandoned village, castle, town, or city gate.

But, each potential ending is emotionally enchanted, emotional, essentially the excellence of words.

You say, “airports”, “frolic doppelganger”, “fruit”, “go”, “happens”, “my”, “one”, “orange”, “oranges”, “one day”.

Saying “quails”, the right quality of river typically enables soccer shoes, each day windows live that loss wearing sunglasses, my words of paper to someone’s great mind phantasm, misgivings etched into plaques of dreamed spaces, expanse visibly wishing, a twinge of untrained dreams, joys, such edges, songbirds, village notice tables of sharper rain eggs, sketchbook words, a necklace of standing down, night packed somersaults of dream spears, period restless, wing kings, lovely never namesake, sky legs and despair mangoes, mildly into the night.

But maybe you realize that the three sleep poems overhead are actually across the street from us, a transport name only, the same turning quest wanted by surface ghosts, some sort of obligatory weather reserved your room for wretched spirits of the optional wind manifests, we manifest repeatedly, a greater utility of ourselves, not pangs of pen town, yes really, truly, absolutely sometimes new.

Even in your dreams you are never walking alone when you think you are, for history has great legions of legs and has yet to run completely out of slippers.

The object is ending, a proud story shaking together preserved by years one would call shiny, substantial, what else, stones of sadness, floating sheets of an excess several volumes opened periodically with small nods of understanding to the sun, slippers, excellence, pain, locals maybes, space, a silky presence of your only start key, small scruples, mirrors out of spaciously desired steps, usually map trails, now scopes of standing witness to a side uncalled by change.

A salesman or stepping rifts, luggage makes a maybe over roses, rose pillows, unhappiness.

You think of something through a person self-explanatory with the earth as counted in your library of wondering people, often us. Dates written by mouse, your own reappear, this world unoccupied by umbrellas stars

Retracted noses sway lost waves of layer mandatory night laces, what that the spirits of a riverboat poem within notecard memory paints sounds drifting remembered by speaking spaces, else silky sign runs roof walking, so they justifiably shout from the workshops of violinists to pages out on the wings of electricity, sorrow, so trying moon, say dancers, did up lines, small remaining end of mushroom puzzle slices.

Sleepwalking required, surfboard rags, spaghetti nighttime stories, return of the town shapes participle slippers, occurrence may level plumage of mirrors, these supplying kind of viewgraphs, short wall rods of storms look simply with the tension of what passing suffering system products might reach snacks, your shadow socks demand nostalgic crevasse of past relationships, lacking service though every times possessed, ever the sleep triangles like singing the due worth of pajamas.

As the islands above sleep through the despondency of parking rights, where its rising rats demand some essential dream of woe milk, your postcard is just the word for probable love, even to think well of repeatedly pickles, is marked by something spent on universal time, send once the dreams are memories, torture noticed in the featered dreams of us, you said “off torment like sky tunnel synonyms, this out moment of counting must be our loved salmonella”, your world crashing into life, and time, and some orbiting latitude well way.

You expected a larger workbench, single supermarket limes, oranges, old ghosts up on walk signs, sleeping signs, it signs left, your pieces there, a public urban dream of feathers, to cross the silky sheets of a ghost town, it doesn’t really matter what you wear, but maybe you should learn of love, in somebody else’s slippers.

So yeah, goodnight moon, goodnight salmonella, goodnight, supermarket limes, and somewhere in some distant galaxy, far enough away that time is thinking about learning how to swim, a treaty has been signed to form a new colony, not a utopia, by these words, space rats, and umbrella stars.

A figment of the imagination, an illusion or apparition, featured dreams, oranges, something new, pajamas, a city, town, gate, castle, person, place, or thing, umbrella stars, it doesn’t really matter what you wear, but maybe you should learn of love, in somebody else’s slippers.

Lagotic Moon

Comics and poetry by Elan Radousky