Father Labat’s Discount Book of the Dead

The Man Who Spoke to Ghosts

The Man who Spoke to Ghosts went deaf,

at least that’s what he told me

under the bridge

warmed by cheap wine

and Sterno flame.

You know you can’t drink that shit to get high anymore, right? he asked me.

He said it was great being deaf

because the whole world was wound up

neat and tight

in a package

in his head

where it hummed.

Now his ears were locks that kept it all in

and kept the voices out.

The Man who Spoke to Ghosts told me it was nice to be alone,

for once,

with his red wine

and canned heat

and his own thoughts -

alone without the voices to bother him.

He said the ghosts were tedious and dull,

had no soul,

no life,

nothing interesting to say.

He said they bored the shit out of him.

With their constant whining

and carping

and pining for the lives

they once had -

the lives they ignored when they had them.

He took another pull from his bottle,

gave me a slap on the knee,

and told me it was great being deaf.

Finally, a little peace, he said.

Above us the semis

and commuters

and joyriders

rumbled past,

shaking the concrete pillars of his home.

Of course the Man who Spoke to Ghosts heard nothing.

I opened my mouth to say something

but stopped.

And the Man who Spoke to Ghosts went on being deaf.