Ghosts.

Ghosts?

Of course I believe in ghosts.

I cannot but do so,

cannot in all honesty deny my own nature,

being myself, for the most part, ghost.

Go find, I defy you, this so-called Self within,

so supremely dear to us

and so exquisitely sensitive,

this flimsy flibbertijibbet

no more solid than any drifting daydream,

than the mists through which it flits.

There's the one and only ghost,

the daddy of ghosts,

the first ghost, creator of all ghosts,

imaginer of all that is immaterial,

source of all superstition,

embodiment of the bodiless,

sustainer of the whole ghost-world.

Indeed, I haunt myself,

and, what's more, I am further haunted

by the many ghosts I entertain,

for the ghost will have company.

I am a ghost plagued by ghosts,

for, though some ghosts are darlings

and I do delight to dally with them,

some are demons, wanting only to torment,

and damned difficult to dislodge.

No! Not under the bed, but in the head,

not roaming without, but rising within.

Listen! It speaks. It speaks.

Indeed, it is rarely silent.