Incantation
by Doug Tanoury
She looks at me and says that I am the ghost of my father
Sitting on her sofa or sleeping on her love seat
And I agree an tell her that his death is simply a ruse
To avoid work and shirk obligations
I believe he still lives
Hiding in fugitive fashion
Like some old Nazi who escaped justice
Somewhere in South America
At the dinner table she calls me by his name
The incarnation of his waywardness
Whenever displeasure is expressed or faults counted
Whenever work goes undone and money is squandered
When promises are broken and bills unpaid
My father lives again
It is all his fault his spirit his failures his disappoints
That haunts this home and those who dwell here
For he has died and left the TV on
Some annoying remnant of him
As if the aftershock of his life here remains
And it is only the words repeated three times as you spin
Around and round
Fast and faster with arms extended
That can exorcise this house
And cleanse it of all his vices
The smell of cigarettes mixed with the muskiness
Of yesterdays clothes and somehow
Silence the sound of his snores
As he naps in the sunlight on summer afternoons
In childish invocation you must say as you twirl
With centrifugal speed in the center of the living room
And repeat after me the tragic incantation
That will force out his ghost
I love your snores
I love your farts
I love your gone
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Author bio:
Doug Tanoury is exclusively a poet of the internet with the vast majority of his work being published online and never leaving electronic form. His verse can be read at electronic magazines and journals across the world. Doug sites his 7th grade poetry anthology used in Sister Debra's English class as exerting the greatest influence on his work. He still keeps a copy of Reflections On A Gift Of Watermelon Pickle And Other Modern Verse (Stephen Dunning, Edward Lueders and Hugh Smith, (c)1966 by Scott Foresman & Company) at his writing desk.
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| Other poems by Doug Tanoury
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