Ghosts

a poem by Christuraj Alex

In a dismal old fashioned cell at our ancestral home,
Wherein coconuts, new and old, heaped like a hillock dome;
Kid-butterflies, we’re often asked to pick some for curry,
Finding phantom-forms we ran as scared as rabbit bury…

Ghosts of the dead, cloud-looking, appear before the living,
Like quirky grey fogs, smokes, or polar creatures, fear-filling!
Great buffets – Necromancy holds – of hosting for the ghosts;
Thirst of restlessness of souls could be quenched- animism boasts…

My logician friend, at the name of ghosts, like thunder, laughs,
Scared, like a mouse, at celluloid ghosts; impulsively coughs!
My alienist neighbor mocks at the poor ghost-affected;
He, in anger, shouts and yells, like a spirit-infected…!

Returning home from Saint Jude Shrine, my grandpa narrated,
Ghost – a monstrous muddy vulture – flew after me, dread spread!
Helpless, like a lost, at that odd hour of snoring slumbers,
I genuflected; made signs of the cross, countless in numbers…

Ghosts got into human beings, like, termites in the wood,
Jesus, chasing them away, their cruel power, withstood;
He worked, as on war-time haste, erasing, greatest evils,
Did the traditions allow him to nail down true devils?

Merchants and money-makers bake ghosts- cakes and sell gently,
Spreading tales on ghost-havocs, they hoax humans kindly;
Holocausts, burnt offerings, and slaughters they delight in,
Cannibalism, for ghosts-sake, in their eyes is not a sin…

Fire-walking, hooking the flesh, live animal wedding,
Cow-trampling, hanging in the air on hooks, hand-hair plucking…
Goety, Bruja, Lamia, incantation, witchcraft…
Aren’t all such mountainous magic and myths great ghosts-updraft?

Phasmophobia, like death-knell, is a fright alarm,
Like illness of body, it hurts the spiritual realm;
An equilibrium of body, mind, spirit, and soul,
Could free us from false fears, molding us integrally whole…

Humans are ghost-angel amalgamation in nature!
Loving and hating themselves and every common creature!
Each thought, word, and action can turn into a ghost in life!
When morals derail from the tracks of existential strife!