The Ghosts of Jay MillAr (15 page)

We could be as content as they. After several days of failed sexual intimacy they decided to throw a party. For fun they traded gender before the guests arrived, in order to explore one another's energy, and to learn a little more about themselves. Everyone was in attendance that evening, from the most famous of pop stars to the lowliest of poets, ghouls, and the like. They chose only to kill those of the literary genre. The first had been a harmless accident. The young woman had been dancing spasmodically to the sound of harps and razor-sharp violins, dubbed over by crickets, junebugs and something else (was it a solo praying mantis?) when she embraced William Blake so violently she snapped his neck. (For years to come the memory of the gentle pop that came to her ears in what seemed an eternity of silence followed by the folding of the man himself like a swan's last breath into her neck was enough to move her to orgasm.) After that it became more of an act of amusement to pick them off one by one during the course of the evening, then make up excuses as to their whereabouts. It was, after all, a rather boring party. ('Purdy? Why he's outside chopping wood again‘Christina Rosetti? Oh, she's in the can. Been in there a while too. I don't know what she's doing in there.' ‘Tom Pynchon has been dead for years you fool!' and so on…) Of course the party had been days ago, and the bodies they had hung like silk garments on plastic coat hangers in the closet behind the bed were beginning to smell. The young man fretted. He had been in trouble with the local authorities before, and wanted not to repeat his mistakes. ‘Fucking writers', he said one day, ‘why do they have to stink so much? Can't they stay pure like glass at the bottom of the sea the way we've always been led to believe?' She would just giggle innocently and blow him a kiss. Every day he insisted they meet after work to discuss what to do. After all, what does one do with a bunch of literary corpses? But they were getting nowhere with these meetings, for each time their lovemaking became more and more intense. And the smell was getting worse. Finally, after a few weeks of mounting passion, they were surprised to discover that the young woman was pregnant (there was a certain look in her eyes), and they opened the closet to discover that nothing was left of the great writers. All that remained was this overpowering stench.

Perfectly Ordinary Dream #2000 (November 21, 1998)

Walter found that it was perfectly logical, actually, that she should appear on the other side of the counter today, so many years in the future, demanding his services in such a quiet voice she could barely be heard. Little Emily Dickinson. So far it had been an extremely dull week, so it was nice to see her again. He had not seen or heard of her since grade eleven. When they were children he had been quite smitten by her childish features. From what he remembered of his feelings towards her, they appeared to be born out of a grade 4 class photo-graph. (O, how many hours of longing grief had that picture caused! He smiled at the thought. She was seated only three heads away.) Why exactly he had been so attracted to her he had no idea, but it was there, and it had been something to believe in throughout his young days. Emily had never been able to show any interest in him at all, never able to comprehend his obsessions, Walter's sworn religion to her and her alone. Forever did Emily cast him from her sight with her vicious remarks, with the whips and the chains only she could cast from her beautiful poisonless mouth, the power she alone had to ignore him completely. And he would never forget the moment he suddenly knew that she had absolutely no interest in him at all. ‘You just go on and on and on and on!' she had said. ‘It's exasperatingly dull!' By high-school, Walter had given up believing in the power of his heart. Knowing that she would never be able to forget his youthful longings while in her presence, he discovered to his surprise that this gave him supernatural powers over her. Sitting across from her in chemistry class, he simply had to observe her reaction to the fact that they were together in the same room to know it was true. Using his voice to poke and prod, he found that he could shape her emotions into several unusual contortions they couldn't possibly have hoped to create without contact with an outside force. Especially a force that had already had a hand in their creation. It had been an interesting year for him, and he would not easily forget the lessons he had learned about the possibilities of love, of mind, and of grief. And today, years later, after no contact whatso-ever, Emily had returned, to ask something of him. Walter could not make out a
single thing she was saying, only that there was a lovely music to her voice. It was the music he was presently conducting with his mind.
WHAT IS IT EXACTLY THAT YOU WANT OF ME
!! he knew he would yell at her as loud as he could over the noise of the radio, shouting directly into her eyes. Then he would refuse to serve her and send her away. But not just yet, he thought, asking her politely once again if she would mind repeating her request. For the sound of her voice was lovely, and he was enjoying themself, carefully playing her as though they were about to break.

Perfectly Ordinary Dream #2198 (August 29, 1997)

‘I know you were late for work this morning/he exclaimed as John entered the photocopy shop. He took a huge bite of a hamburger. ‘You must now fill out this form, so that I may attempt to have you fired‘His employer chomped again, though it didn't seem possible that he had finished the previous bite. John looked down at the fat and grease that was collecting on the front of his silk pink blouse. ‘If you would like to appeal my decision', he said, biting at the same time, ‘you may of course fill out the form on the reverse and submit it as well, but such an appeal can take up to a year to process ‘He took another bite and John looked deep into the gaping hole. ‘During this time you shall work here in this shop at no cost to me, your wages supplied by the taxpayers through the new welfare system‘
Ah, fuck
it, thought John, tearing up the silver piece of paper and placing it like a bib beneath the gaping hole as it continued to chew its most recent section of hamburger,
for the rest of the summer I thinke I'll take my chances and meditate peacefully upon the state of poverty that is most common in this part of the world.
‘I quit', he said. ‘Suit yrself, loser', grunted his employer between bites. John Keats then left the photocopy shop.
Perhaps some daye he shall finde happiness. But I suppose by that time he will have reached the ende of his life, and the experience shall only be another waste of our most precious resource.
He wondered if he was really referring to all that paper he wasted on useless photocopies. ‘A little of each', he said aloud as he opened the door and stepped outside into the sunshine as an unemployed bum for the first time in years, ‘though I suspect that the waste of paper will have more of an effect upon the entire species' He stretched as high as he could and breathed deeply.
Forget this gamey leg,
he thought, I
shalle walk all night if it is necessary.
And he started off down the street with a happy limp. ‘It is nigh time I departed this place of back-stabbing pirates and greed𔁡 The sun was beginning to set. The streets were deserted except for the most valiant of hot dog vendors. Flashy, meaningless posters were plastered everywhere, each one advertising the most recent corporate scam. The maze had been maddening, but here it was only a sunset. What a ridiculous place in which to find our hero, the poet,
John Keats, surrounded by emblems of a world gone mad with forgetting.
Rotten Fuckers,
he decided, looking around,
poor frightened twisted fiends…
The souls of poets dead and gone… His limp grew worse. And he made his way home upon it. When he arrived hediscovered his old employer waiting for him in the back yard. He was down on his hands and knees and appeared to be praying, but he was only planting a small garden of paperclips for him, a whole nest of them, little silver creatures shining and squeaking. When he looked up John could tell he had been crying, saddened by something, but he wasn't sure if it was just the labour involved in planting the little shoots. ‘It has been so difficult without you', the man bubbled softly from behind his soapy eyes, everything suddenly becoming lit by a glow that arose from the paper-clips. ‘Won't you please come back and write us a poem? I beg of you, please' And he grasped his own hands before him in a prayer. ‘No way', answered Keats, rising to the greatest height his gamey leg would permit. ‘For thou hast maketh me to hayte the wordes that poureth from mye inky whole. I giveth up all words from this daye forward to become insteade a saylor of the waters of the whorle.' And he left the pleasant garden scene and mayde his waye, lymping downe to the sea.

Perfectly Ordinary Dream #2748 (August 6, 1988)

Regarding the calligraphy of this parchment

she knew she was looking at the work of a true artist.

It's always nice to receive a letter from the heaven, isn't it?

The flowing lines were so precise, and the ink blots

connecting each moment had been placed an interval

that gave the overall piece a perfect balance.

Nothing of it could possibly be interpreted in any way

('Dear Death, hello'). The occasional ‘h' found along

the margin of the work seemed to have a specific

reference to the past, to a lost culture, one splattered

against the new language that had been emerging

from the hills, and during a particularly interesting reading

she realized that each of these symbols appeared in lower case.

While thinking the capital suggested a crossing

over (having the physical appearance of a bridge), along

a beam stretching between two states of being, now joined,

(these poles who remain apart are separated only by death)

the lower case could only suggest an attempt that failed

miserably in any way to communicate

beginning from the left and falling short

of any connection with the right

left to decipher all the

beautiful unreadable calligraphy

Perfectly Ordinary Dream # 3097 (June 30, 1973)

They all found it wonderful, living in an attic by the seaside,

rearranging the furniture. His wife was there, as was God,

(of course) and several friends who would sometimes pose

nude near the window while he painted, their forms becoming

more and more like shapes in the yellow of the sun. Van Gogh

himself had recently taken to wearing leather biker jackets and

smoking American filterless cigarettes. It was 1977, the summer

almost over, lazy, lost, turning golden and slightly mad with hope.

Everyone content to live by the sea breathing deep lungfulls of

saltwater air from dawn till dusk. And on weekends they could go

to the fair! God had designed the attic, since Her room was just

off to one side, and She acted as an omnipotent landlord of sorts.

In the evenings, after sunset, the entire group would gather here