[Originally published in Duchamp Magazine]
The Jews say spirit is a bone,
a solid part, as hard as stone.
Others think it’s like the gas
that glows and hovers o’er the grass
in graveyards hosting dead ancestors,
who go a-ghosting, when methane festers.
Some fancy it a subtle vapor
binding body and mind without any tape or
glue or velcro or rubber cement,
or artisan’s mucilage, handcrafted in Ghent.
Some say it grows like a sac ‘neath the gullet,
trapping gristle and bone of carp, catfish, and mullet,
and gum, and all that you oughtn’t to swallow:
in bad boys it’s full, but in good girls it’s hollow.
Or is it oil? Or is it steam?
Or the residue of last night’s dream?
Is it in the phlegm ducts? Is it in the bile?
Does it grow like a frog from the slime of the Nile?
Or is it chyle, or pus, or some other juice?
Does it grow on a tree in a pod like a goose,
and drop off when the branch can not manage its weight?
Does the hour of dropping determine its fate?
Would it be more like Roquefort or Brie, were it cheese?
Or more like the Swiss through which bloweth a breeze?
And where does it go for la petite mort (when I sneeze)?
And don’t answer: it goeth wherever it please.
Is it just something bloated that floated downriver?
Or something that's noted for the quirk of its quiver?
Or something that hides in a shell like a clam?
Or something repulsively pinkish like ham?
I know I have it,
though I’ve never seen it.
There’s always something lodged between it
and me, its presumed possessor.
Or is it only on lease,
and if so, who’s the lessor?
Could I find it with a tongue depressor?
Is it the dentures upon the dresser,
in a glass of tepid water?
Does it need to be fed,
and if so, what’s its fodder?
Methinks it deprived of all figure and form,
something that’s neither translucent nor warm,
nor opaque, nor cool, nor even, nor odd,
nor like, nor unlike, some posited God
to whom it would cling as its Maker and King.
Nor, for that matter, like anything.
--November, 2003
(for Henry More and Theodore Geisel)
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