THE FRIENDLY GHOST

by BRADLEY MASON HAMLIN

for Johnny Casper




On the dry highway again, 99 going south to see you in Nevada, in Las Vegas, and hoping you’re still there, everything you are, still there, everything you wanted still there …

But your house, your haunting ground, your graveyard—has been violated—a raped ribcage of a life lying in tatters: old photographs of people no one knows but you—now ripped in half by ghouls with uncontrollable greed—fingers grabbing your boxer shorts, your toothpaste, your antique clock.

I’m on my Johnny, on that same old dry desert road once more, and only once more, for your things, for your stuff, your guts, your memory—the physical nuts & bolts of your life. I think of you as I gaze at the gas gauge already a quarter tank gone and I gotta stop the vehicle, drink a Schaefer—you liked Coors but Schaefer is on special—and I write this down on the roadside—if not for you, for me, but then again—maybe you’re helping me write this now.

What’s it like being a ghost, Godfather?

Give me a sign if you can.

But you probably can’t hear me ‘cause Sinatra’s in town and you have free seats at Caesar’s for eternity.

I know you were never a suit and tie kind of guy, but I’m dressed in my best out of respect for you, getting gassed, and listening to rock & roll on the radio …

If you’re still a good fisherman, hear me now Grandfather—lower the hook and let it drop into the beer of my brain and I will think of you as a good ghost, touching this reality from the world of lakes and streams …

Remember when we fished off of Santa Monica pier and I never caught anything more interesting than a starfish? Makes me laugh, thinking of how you got pissed off because I wanted taquitos instead of cheeseburgers. Man, I dug those days and will continue to dig the source, because you understood the ocean salt and the magic of open-minded simplicity. And you were by my side when I finally did catch something, a three-foot shovel-nose shark. You stuck your big fisherman’s blade into his belly, told me not to be afraid as his guts spilled out and taught me how to cut him up for crab bait.

You had my back and therefore reside in my heart, even now, like the time you bought me a chemistry set that operated on Kool-Aid. I drank all the flavors from the test tubes. You drank a Coors and said, “Oh well …” And when I was a little guy I bit your thumb as hard as I could because you could take it and you said, “Bite harder!” But now your tough flesh and bones is only a box of ashes without even an urn to hold your remains.

You wanted to be buried in the rose garden, but they died on the same day—and I’m speeding toward you now, hoping to take that box and cast you out to sea where you belong, with all the gambling pirates who never won the big one. Maybe you can roll bones with Davy in the driftwood of a bygone vessel.

Yes, good ghost, I speed onward to set you free of the casinos and one-armed bandits. This is the last lonely ride ever. I am a fish out of water without you, but I am taking you with me. Even as the desert threatens—here I come ...





Mystery Island Bottled Message No. 13
"The Friendly Ghost" by Bradley Mason Hamlin. Launched: 10.31.05 by Mystery Island. 2005 © Copyright Mystery Island Publications. All rights reserved. “The Friendly Ghost” originally appeared as a poem in the literary newspaper FreeThought, Summer 1993 and in the small press chapbook Psychology of the Shark, published by Island Graphics (1994).


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