Member Poem

A thing about ghosts?
Don’t we all have them for anyone of a number of fascinating reasons.
The sheer mystery of them.
“THEY TAKE OVER OUR LIVES!”
Our imaginations as well.
Not alone at certain times of the year.
Anyone with the remotest yen for these apparently unearthly creatures or would be wisps of silver silhouettes will concede in gasps of ground shaking awe the grip they even at the slightest skeletal hint of the word or words ghosts themselves.
Maybe their implacability, trancelike, transcendental, mystic notions that pop up.
If you are one of those kindred spirits or kid spirits, kind spirits then let me tell you about Aurora the taxi driver for midnight ghosts.
Of course she had a daylight existence but her itinerary during nocturnal hours was the sky to her spirited sojourn.
“I’m Aurora, I wonder if I’ll live to see another day or another night.
This witching hour dormant obsessive.”
Some even thought her  vehicle looked like a ghost.
“That vehicle.
Why do you have this thing about Ghosts Aurora?”
A casual acquaintance enquired peering into Aurora’s gleam starlit eyes.
“Goes back to my early years.
I was an only child.
In one  sense.
I could hear the slightest thing moving.
These sounds and then the magic up in the air whisks.”
As a child she often dreamed of changing form and doing hall of mirror sleights.
Aurora was in full vocal flight as this fetish, fadish was soon to otherworld her into her current occupation.
“Often feel I’m kind of trapped by this fellow ghost thing and my fellow ghosts.
But it’s my thing nonetheless.
Just there is this  other place I’ve been to .. and going to maybe.”
Wistfully she Aurora
added the aside.
“Wonder if I’m a reflection of myself being a flit between dimensions and other things!!”
The acquaintance whose name was Clementine  herself was now being sucked, drawn into this ethereal life.
Clementine was petite and drole.
And did at the best of times  have  a frightening similarity to Aurora.
An alternative life style segues.
“Ooops am I scaring you? … Clementine , I see this puzzle on your face.”
Clementine  now had to gingerly concede something.
“I’ve been to so many places at night.
That can’t be gainsaid or denied.
Where else have I to go?”
The relationship wasn’t that deep but when they did meet it was this transformative encounter.
There was something yet to be told about their
“relationship.”
“I felt like I was becoming a ghost.
I’m not possessed or am I?”
Clementine mused whilst others noted their resemblance.
But please continue.
The evening had this twilight facade as star sprinkle precursor to Aurora’s midnight haunt of a humorous dark gothic guffaw existence.
“Jokes abound about what you do …
But you do have this clique of ghosts you count?
And the ghost cubs, spots and haunts.”
Clementine  gulped.
“Did I see you elevate, levitate, lift those dainty feet off the…”
Oh Aurora did a spin to the opposite side of pavement that had crystal glitter inserts.
Aurora wasn’t above cringe making jokes about FRUITS of Clementine’s labour.
And getting back to the
RIND(GRIND).
Unobtrusive but had this topaz effect.
But Aurora would wave in her inimitable quaint way and prepare herself for her livelihood off site.
She  started hearing many of the surreal exploits in her mind.
Her wee small hour velvet vault could only be unlocked by her treasure trove key.
People often commented on her fantasy state during either the day or the night.
But nocturnal  was Aurora’s spirited  habitat.
One can just about imagine with her infinite….
“I can’t help but replay  phenomenal incident rich episodes.
Me in a let’s pretend world of chaos that no fiction writer would or could conceive of.”
A shocked sense of realisation stimulated by sonorous bewitching bells dawned on that halo endowed aura of Aurora.
“They are ringing in my ear.
Actually I have trained my mind to signal when I am compelled to do something.
Appointments. Ooooh a monument of ghost stuff inside me.”
At times Aurora’s endowed mind almost had a transformative manifest power.
But Aurora, in awe of her own galactic filing system mind  that a flood  of imposing  twinklings and inklings would be a dam burst if  even she attempted to prise it open.
An icy yet perfumed hand tapped her on her left leaning agile shoulder.
“Often wonder exactly where have you gone?
In that mind, space, heart of yours:”
Bryce, an illuminating male ghost getting very philosophical.
There were myriads of ghosts Aurora had to cater for.
Bryce and Aurora revelled in hugs among so many others.
“When we finish this display of affection I’d better bring you to the cemetery.
Your weekly after hours sojourn.
Let me weave my magic wand and conjure up that other ghost.
MY TAXI!”
Aurora speaking in her best dark midnight  voice.
The madcap mystique magic yet very sleek in the sky taxi which seemed or appeared to do impossible stunts was one of the many incidents you could expect.
No two trips were ever identical in any conceivable sense.
And of course Aurora’s other litany of schedules.
The actual sound emanating from the ghost mobile  if one so wanted to describe the orbiting taxi which of course …. on course or off course … all those terms would equally apply in the gothic go for it death defying stunts racing up and down unfamiliar routes.
The helter skelter of high jinx.
There were  group fares and side of curb pick ups along the way.
Inquistive clientele and a few surprises.
Bryce shouted.
“Aurora, what's that in the back and back of the taxi?
Sounds like familiar voices.”
Aurora emitted a dead of night  belly laugh.
“You often wonder where I have been to?
Everybody does because the things I have picked up don’t look as if they are part of this life.”
Aurora’s mind could go anywhere and do anything.
But its limits are but an infinite that as of yet she hadn’t figured out.
The ghost mobile had this almost sinewy image to the onlooker.
Bryce had this hunch but could barely contain himself.
“Silent aren’t we Bryce?
I have many sides to me.
Maybe you do as well.
Perhaps we are prone to a resource that is  multifaced or multi facet.”
Aurora spot on and on the spot.
Bryce the genial ghost kept his mumbling bumbling sense of humour silent but for awhile.
He uttered a ……
ummm.
Taut, mathematical laced with rippled giggles.
Peering out the window a suite of flitting images that seemed to be both metaphor and symbol for  death as well as life.
Rows of dark green copses, gleaming coal lustre ticket machines for journeys we have been to or yet  to be.
Linear street lights whose hazy glaze gleam illuminated  much trodden pavement with periodic figures that flit about yet flicker interminably,
“Yikes a flying saucer  skimming  my window.”
A shriek from Aurora that shook the swaying taxi.
“As much as I enjoy the intrigue can my heart take much more?”
Aurora on deep reflection whose heart palpitates.
“Still I have this empathy for things hidden. Yet dogged by this racing impulse in the mind that there are recesses I must explore.”
She observed against a murky monument of thought.
Suddenly  a sinister introduction from nowhere.
“We are the  hair raising ghosts in the back booth.
Amarra, Alina, Anastasia.
The three As.
As as in ace.
We swop waves at night don’t forget.”
Bryce huddled at the  back wondering.
Where is this all leading to?
Maybe the lot of us should put some daylight between these
nightscape shenanigan this bizarre taxi driver might proffer.
“Aurora, where are you?
This vehicle can’t be driving itself.
It’s made of solid substances.”
Gusts of cross purposes
pirouetting.
Dance steps, echos, strains of bells tolling ….
Where has Aurora gone to?
More than a philosophical question at this point?
Who put the quest in question?”
Bryce now a completely unsettled SPIRIT!
“Hey here we are ….. on the outside.
Me, Aurora and the others.”
But the taxi is still veering and vaulting.
“OH HOLY SCREECHING TIRES
Is that a swear word from one of us.”
Auror and the rest of the clan.
“What are you doing on the outside?’
I thought this ghost mobile was a real vehicle.
But somehow seems real.
The places it has gone to
And the people in it.”
Bryce can’t fathom the turn of events.
To say nothing of the eerie noise scape of dripping pipes, scattered moon beams.
Cars slowing up and down.
“This is scaring the living daylights out of me.”
Bryce opined.
“And the rest of us here.”
And in a shard shattering moonlight flash they were outside the agreed cemetery.
“But where has the taxi gone?
Has it a life of itself, its own.”
The entire  ghosts and the surprise guest in a secluded cemetery where graves emit chuckles.
“Clementine … fancy seeing you here.
Fancy not seeing you here.”
Bryce overstated  amid a background of tentacled brambles with gleaming galaxy smeared spikes.
And guffaws from spirits within the graves that still had some life in them.!?
Yes the misty jet black curtain graves where people came with trepidation to hear laughter.
The other ghosts and clementine joined in.
Swathes of comic giggles suspended in a frosty air.
“BRYCE YOURSELF”  …BRACE YOURSELF”
Clementine quipped to the ghost concerned.
“Why not show some
CLEMENTINECY while your at it.”
Hilarious uproar.
“I meant to say CLEMENCY of course.”
Bryce added.
“ From me I gathered that much.
Get that a FRUITFUL GROAN.
Gather fruit.”
Clementine interjected but Bryce retorted a self directed joke.
“Yes.  That came as no
SURBRYCE ~ SURPRISE.”
Bryce had to groan.
But they both reunited with  the ghosts who were enjoining something with a spine cool air of finality about.
There had been visits to this place before.
Yet nothing quite like this circus which now had this strange life of its own into early morning before there was a staggered vanishing act.

An eerie epoch equally vanished and some unusual  happenings or non happenings might be a better phrase seamlessly disappeared.
Lulls and gaps with notable absences also but in a town with a constant state of flux not entirely unexpected.
Then one  day  Clementine was going for an early stroll but
was shocked with what she saw.
“Aurora, is that you at the crack of dawn?
This has never happened before .., you have your clique.”
Aurora guffawed amid the cry of baby ghosts.
“And it’s not a faults  dawn either?”
Get that through no fault  of my own.”
Clementine was struck dumb for once.
“Just sick and tired of all this cloak and dagger nightly stuff.
As I said once I have to put some daylight in my life.”
Aurora was now the visible ghost at an unlikely time.
“Clementine about the taxi … well.
My new job is an undertaker.
I undertake to embark on an out in the open DEAD ON LIFE rather than a DEAD ON DEATH  nightwatch.”
Clementine completely stunned.
As for the taxi well it could be used as a hearse.
“HEARSE TODAY GONE TOMORROW!
And Bryce and my mainstay ghosts.
And their little ghosts.”
And Auror were wherever!

Clementine saw an unusual shuffle as if Aurora was being whisked away almost as if being captured.
Now Clementine continued to walk in a wobbly fashion.
No more nocturnal exploits, no more laughing graves, no more sudden appearances.
Was Clementine now possessed?
Hello, an apparent stranger said to Clementine though this seemingly unseen before person seemed familiar.
“Hello, you look as if you have seen a ghost?”
She clementine paused.
“I think I have today, several this morning?
But where have they gone?”
The apparent stranger continued walking and winked whilst saying.
“Maybe not as far as you might think!”
And kept on walking whilst looking backwards!