Arianna Georgi

In certain kinds of TV Shows
there often comes a part
where the eager rookie, or spunky female cop,
or jaded, hardened veteran who swears this is his last case,
goes to talk
with someone
who wears glasses
and uses words like “database”
and looks very smart
and sits in front of a computer
and types a few things
and makes a statement
that causes me to pause every time,

“this guy is a ghost!”
they say,
and I know what they mean,
and even if I didn’t,
the smart looking person would go on to explain
“no license, no fingerprints, no record, etc.
it’s like you are chasing a ghost!”
And he does not mean a real ghost,
but it makes me think all the same,

that if I was a ghost I probably would commit crimes
having returned from the dead
to find there is no afterlife
or grand reason to be good,
just the same old world
but more transparent this time
with walls I could walk through
and children doing silly imitations of me
on Halloween.

I would think
that after wandering for a few weeks
doing typical ghost things
like spying my loved ones and
and appearing behind my enemies in mirrors to scare them
I probably would turn to a life of crime
because really
who would be able to stop me
and without fingerprints it would be easy
and anyway being a ghost would probably be
boring as hell

I would probably start small;
stealing candy bars from the drugstore
or old ladies’ handbags,
the kind of thing
I would never have done as a person
it would still be more interesting
than floating through the forest
startling hikers and squirrels
or slamming doors in old mansions
or anything else I could be doing

so I would move on to bigger things
and organize a crime ring
or drug empire
or whatever else it is the bad guy does
and run it
in the way only a ghost can
never showing up for meetings
and occasionally floating out to torment my associates
by moaning their names
if they got out of line

and after years and years
I would be rich enough to retire
and live the good life
on a yacht in Capri
and drink martinis all day
lying on the sundeck
only I’d be a ghost
and the life (good or not)
would have already been lived
and the martinis would dribble to the floor
and I wouldn’t be able to get a tan
so there would just be this
the floating around,
the moaning,
the organizing a crime empire,
and whatever else

and when the spunky female cop
or rookie,
or jaded veteran, showed up at my door
I would want to let them in
but the doorknob would slip through my ghost fingers
and they would burst down the door
to an empty room
and swear

while I stood in the corner wishing
they would handcuff me, or shoot at me
or anything else
to prove I am there.

Tags: Ghosts, poems

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