Seven Spirits

I was drifting across the ocean of thought, hanging on to dear life

When I came upon a boat floating in open water, and there I found

Seven spirits waiting for me to come aboard and sit with them for a while.

 

The first spirit was my friend Jonathan,

Who is always on my mind when I’m under the weather,

Someone who knows me inside and out,

Someone who would never let me drown,

So why didn’t you throw me that lifeline, dear Jonathan,

When I was twenty-five and you seven years the wiser,

When you were still young and I had wrinkles to prove my age.

I asked you where we’re all heading to, headed at, and you smirked and said

“It’s all a matter of time, Dearest, until we’re eaten by the worms,

but while we’re wasting away, here on this boat,

let’s make a fire out of our wooden oars,

our legs and wooden hearts,

that would not be touched by sympathy,

by whatever emotion there is to express what we truly feel about ourselves”

and I said that I’m too scared, that I would rather talk about him for a minute.

And so he faced me, kissed me, and thus threw me over board again.

 

The second spirit was my friend Benjamin, whose name

Of all names are like sister and I, like mentor and candle,

like water and wood swaying from side to side,

and I told him that he had never looked that good

And his beating heart he carried in his hands for everyone

To easily pierce through, to rip out of his grasp and toss over board

spoke to me and said “why did you leave me, why did you leave me

when I was still a child and you, you sent me to slaughter, you

Who were my daughter, my only friend,

You tore me open and poured the ocean’s water over me,

And the salt left an itchy wound and kept me from healing”

And I tried to close my eyes and ears and it just wouldn’t stop

Speaking out to me, calling out to me. And all the tears that I shed 

 

dropped down into the big wide open and made the water more salty,

My eyes even drier and our life-long history even more rocky.

 

The third spirit I was glad to meet in the boat, of all places

I know that is the least comfy, so I was dragged out of my zone

To meet her again, and she gave me that glance to freeze the whole world over,

And spoke down to me in that condescending, tantalising voice

That would never leave my ears again: “nothing

you have ever seen or heard of or experienced or came upon or

across will always stay with you, since most things

will be forgot in the second before your world turns upside down,

and all the information you gathered over the years

could have been of such use to ghostly encyclopaedic sites,

and all the rites, all the rhythm in your heart you rehearsed for when you

imagined yourself to glimmer and glitter will be forgot as soon as you

enter that last second before the whole world freezes over”

and I could only but break down, shake my weak side

when she was the one to blame for that harsh streak,

that character of mine I could have sworn I left behind when I left home

And when I heard those trumpets bellow, that unworldly tune,

That is the moment when I ended up on that ocean in that mood.

 

“So, have you changed?" asked the fourth spirit, and I sat with her for a while.

We chin-wagged about the good oulde days when we were twelve,

When she was still blonde and I still dumb, numb, and barely at all.

When hair would start growing in the unlikeliest of places,

And she would kiss her bed-side poster’s faces,

When we were still full of imagination and dreams to behold,

And she drank out of that cup, drank that coffee on that boat

That rocked my world for so many years to unfold.

“Maybe those past ten years were a waste of time” and I confessed

That I had none of those brainy comments at my disposal,

Not confessing that she stole my life when I was fourteen,

When I was sitting on that desk, and so I took that knife and carved goodbye

Into the wood next to her thigh, and she smiled

And her crooked tooth still standing afar,

was yellow to the nerve and I rocked that boat “i zäh Jahr”.

 

The fifth spirit with flaming red hair, was the image of myself

In seven years’ time when I’d still be stuck and you'll all be bored

By this electronic networking, our strong and independent cup of tea,

And Juliet was her name, told me to stand my ground,

Never to give in cause surrender, oh yes, surrender is futile and sin,

And I asked her whether waiting for another life in exchange for mine

Would be an elegant solution to the lion fighting within me and I,

And she said that “we’re all doomed to live with and through and by

Ourselves, and every person we meet along the way is yet another story-line

to stretch and decorate our eulogy with.”

And I said that we were all cursed and purified at the same time,

That we could choose to drink from the cup or the flask,

Choose left or right, choose a card, as Tom the ferry-man had pointed out,

choose to lose, but then again, who are we losing it for?

 

So I got up, ran to the very end of the boat that rocked my life

For more than a quarter-century to find my dead sister sitting on the brim,

Ready to fall off, ready to give in and leave that shelter again,

So I grabbed her arm and chose her to be my sixth spirit on this island of mine.

She turned to me, and speaking through her black veiled hair she said

“I know you’re thinking about me seven times a day, seven days a week,

but why don’t you visit me in those places that were ours

when we were children, when we were scared to face the evil of the world?”

and I said that I was all grown up now, that life had slapped me in the face,

that I have been beaten many times to ever return to those happy days,

and she said that “nothing is too dark to never reappear, you should

never opt to make your life that easy, and if it does, then please,

forget about me; do it for my remembrance and for my safety,

but should you ever get too uncomfortable, we can always claim

that place of all places for ourselves again” and I said that

I have stopped dreaming a long, long time ago, I am all grown up now

and have embraced it in its entirety. And so she started weeping,

And her sobbing still haunts me sometimes when I close my eyes,

And I wake up from slumber, thinking she’s lying next to me.

 

The seventh and final spirit I met on that boat, on that

Rocky Road to Dublin, was my saviour, my hero, the lover of mine,

My kind of guy that would never let me down,

And I said why I am so afraid of giving with both hands

While I am waiting for you to return some of that gesture

And he said “well, I am a tatter-tale, don’t take it too personal,

I am that kind of spirit that keeps taking because you are sweet,

You are that perfect soul I would hug and cuddle and kiss,

But my words will never get through to you since you are that bell

That keeps ringing whenever someone is opening his or her mouth;

You are the noise the seven of us hear whenever you are the queen,

The queen of it all; don’t get me wrong, we still love you,

But the train has left the station, the car used up all its petrol and oil,

And you’re standing there all by yourself, keeping people at arm’s length,

and I said that my eighth spirit told me to be free,

Which means never to expect or imagine situations seven minutes

Before midnight, and most of all, I stressed and stood up

And made the boat rock even more, I knew not to be afraid anymore;

And so I took that leap of faith, jumped off the boat into the cold cold water

And kept swimming until the waves swallowed me whole.