"You again," he said. There was a figure slumping on his sofa, like a weary traveler on a train, its head wrapped in toilet paper. "What now?" asked Damon. "The ephemeral sting of love? The darkening iris of existence? The vernacular of lust?"
"The emptiness of writer's block," said the ghost.
"Go on. Get some sleep," said Damon. The ghost hovered onto it's side and rolled over onto the sofa, facing it's back toward the living room.
Minutes later, as Damon tried to sleep, footsteps made their way down the hallway to the bedroom. A shirt on a hanger fell to the floor. "Oops" said the ghost.
"What is it now?" asked Damon.
"I can't write. I feel like my balls were clipped off."
"They were probably cremated," said Damon to himself.
"Ha. Ha." said the ghost. "Let's see what happens to you when I neuter you in your sleep."
"Okay. I get it," said Damon. "Go to sleep."
The next day the ghost poet was gone. There was a message scrawled out in the margins of the newspaper. "The thing about being a ghost and a poet at the same time, you don't really have access to the things that torment you."
It made sense. That afternoon, Damon created an altar on the kitchen countertop. He pinned up naked pictures of women. He brought out bottles of whiskey, and wine. He organized a spice rack full of pharmaceuticals. He left out a switchblade. Then he urinated onto the items. "That oughta bring it all back," he said to himself.
That night, he went to bed and for the first time in a week, he heard the familiar agony and ecstasy of faint yet fervent typing. It continued for weeks. And then one day, when Damon got back to the apartment, there was a manuscript waiting for him. He flipped through it, "Not bad, spook! Not bad at all."
He submitted the book to Manic D Press, a small publisher for poets and got a check for $5,000. They had printed an image of a skull with candle in it on the cover, which to Damon was a bit on the tacky side.
This was the ghost's third book of poetry, and already the ghost could be heard pacing about, composing stanzas in the darkened hallway at night. Damon could hear the old creaking of the desk chair whenever the phantom's great, invisible weight settled into it.
One night, as the ghost composed it's poems, Damon went into the living room and flicked on the lights. This seemed to startle the ghost, and he vanished, leaving a half written poem rolled in the typewriter. Damon sunk into the sofa and put his feet up onto the glass coffee table. "Get your mojo back?" he asked the room.
The wall opposite of him began to take on a mottled look, the way a page of a paperback novel looked in a light drizzle. Words began to form. "There is a kind of release in laboring humbly all your life, to see only after the end, that you had greatness all along," wrote the ghost. "Hopefully the women will come."
"What are you gonna do? Ghost fuck 'em?" asked Damon.
A low breeze snaked along the walls and sheets of paper erupted from the desktop. "I'd have more luck than you," said the ghost, now a voice coming from the ceiling.
"Poetry is dead, my friend," said Damon. "Dead as you are. What century are you from?"
The window panes rattled.
"Poets. You all are a self absorbed lot. Concerned with the grandiosity of your own feelings. Wanting to shower the world with sad observations. Useless. I'm more of a biography reader. Real people. Real situations. I don't like wasting my time with fiction. Poems. Bullshit."
The typewriter rose into the air and dropped to the floor.
"Go into the light. This world doesn't even concern you anymore. You're like that old kid in the sixth grade who flunked three times. The kid with full-grown facial hair, ruling the basketball courts. Move on."
A pencil on the table stood on its tip and began scribbling erratically onto a corner of an old newspaper. "But I have so much more to write," it read.
"Poetry doesn't sell anymore. People don't bother. Besides, it's only a window into yourself. It's a sad, myopic thing. There's a larger window and a much greater mystery out there. Just pass through, and all of your ideas will seem small in comparison. That is what you want isn't it?"
"Yeah," said the ghost. "I suppose." Damon looked into the glass and saw the figure of a man standing next to him. He looked like a young J.D. Salinger.
"Good. Now get going, before you start resorting to cliches."
There was a bright pulse of light from the ceiling, and the ghost disappeared.
* * *
The next day a young family walked through the door. They greeted Damon cordially, paid him five hundred dollars, thanked him for a job well done and saw him to the door.
Outside, the day brought on new possibilities. There was a haunting down on Hausten Street. It involved a notebook and strange cryptic phrases appearing on the walls and in the mirrors. He believed his to be the ghost of famous poet whom he admired. He was excited and nervous. It had been decades since her last book was published.
He found the apartment and knocked on the door. A young couple answered. They looked tired and fearful. "Hello" smiled Damon. "My name is Damon Weathers. Spirit guide. Literary agent. Ghost poet whisperer. I hear you have a problem."
"That's right," said the man. "This one is of lyrical canon."
"I know," said Damon smiling broadly. "I have all of her books at home."
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