Mark Ryden "Ghost Girl"
"Ghost in the Land of Skeletons"
By: Christopher Kennedy
If not for flesh's pretty paint, we're just a bunch of skeletons, working hard to deny the fact of bones. Teeth remind me that we die. That's why I never smile, except when looking at a picture of a ghost, captured by a camera lens, in a book about the paranormal. When someone takes a picture of a spirit, it gives me hope. I admire the ones who refuse to go away. Lovers scorned and criminals burned. I love the dead little girl who plays in her yard, a spectral game of hide and seek. It's the fact they don't know they're dead that appeals to me most. Like a man once said to me, Do you ever feel like you're a ghost? Sure, I answered, every day. He laughed at that and disappeared. All I could think was he beat me to it.
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This poem was very interesting. Actually, it was unlike any other poem I've read. The topic, narrative, tone, and message all seemed slightly different to me than what I was expecting. When I read the title, "Ghost in the Land of Skeletons" I was expecting a pirate poem. Kennedy's interesting observation in the first line of this prose poem throws that idea down. He doesn't say that"without the pretty paint we are temporary shells", which is an idea I've seen expressed often in poetry, he says without the "pretty paint, we're just a bunch of skeletons". This line was a hook that caught my interest. However, instead of giving more observations like the one in the first line, Kennedy instead begins to speak casually as if to a friend about paranormal books and why he likes the ghost stories inside them. Then, just as the poem is drawing to a close and the reader may be expecting another observation similar to the one in the first line, Kennedy throws a curve ball. The speaker is a ghost himself, or at least this is what I assume when the speaker remarks of the ghost man's dissapearance "he beat me to it".
Besides the poems non-rhyming, casual tone, curve-ball narrative, and prose appearance, which make it different than any other poem I've read, it is hard to find a message in the poem, except maybe that the reader is meant to believe in spirits after reading. The speaker is presumably a spirit, who admires the other spirits that do not know they are dead and "refuse to go away".
If not for flesh's pretty paint, we're just a bunch of skeletons, working hard to deny the fact of bones. Teeth remind me that we die. That's why I never smile, except when looking at a picture of a ghost, captured by a camera lens, in a book about the paranormal. When someone takes a picture of a spirit, it gives me hope. I admire the ones who refuse to go away. Lovers scorned and criminals burned. I love the dead little girl who plays in her yard, a spectral game of hide and seek. It's the fact they don't know they're dead that appeals to me most. Like a man once said to me, Do you ever feel like you're a ghost? Sure, I answered, every day. He laughed at that and disappeared. All I could think was he beat me to it.
____________________________________________________________________
This poem was very interesting. Actually, it was unlike any other poem I've read. The topic, narrative, tone, and message all seemed slightly different to me than what I was expecting. When I read the title, "Ghost in the Land of Skeletons" I was expecting a pirate poem. Kennedy's interesting observation in the first line of this prose poem throws that idea down. He doesn't say that"without the pretty paint we are temporary shells", which is an idea I've seen expressed often in poetry, he says without the "pretty paint, we're just a bunch of skeletons". This line was a hook that caught my interest. However, instead of giving more observations like the one in the first line, Kennedy instead begins to speak casually as if to a friend about paranormal books and why he likes the ghost stories inside them. Then, just as the poem is drawing to a close and the reader may be expecting another observation similar to the one in the first line, Kennedy throws a curve ball. The speaker is a ghost himself, or at least this is what I assume when the speaker remarks of the ghost man's dissapearance "he beat me to it".
Besides the poems non-rhyming, casual tone, curve-ball narrative, and prose appearance, which make it different than any other poem I've read, it is hard to find a message in the poem, except maybe that the reader is meant to believe in spirits after reading. The speaker is presumably a spirit, who admires the other spirits that do not know they are dead and "refuse to go away".
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