Invention



Ghost, I keep you tethered
in the shadow of my heart, tied to the tree of my ambition.

I have searched theaters of the flesh
for your imagined face, and found you

among the boy whores working the carpeted hallways
of the cinema, or at the beach in late summer

tanned thighs slipping from a sarong, urging me to compare you
to the heraldic figures.

You, my sweet invented one, I have loved you
more cleanly and with greater cruelty

than any actual suitor, to whom
I offered questions,

fed breakfast, or drove home in my car.
I wander the empty house (memory).

You appear to me stock-still
in the snow-covered corn, guarding

what I have inflicted upon you.
I beg your forgiveness. I who invented you,

I brought you here to illustrate
my own sense of having once been shattered,

then destroyed you to show the world
I intended to be whole.

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