CASPER
THE FRIENDLY GHOST
Etruscan Song
No love like mine; no love
transformed a hotel room into a womb
and a womb into the child's cry;
no love, no love, no love like mine.
Read in the dark, one hand on dick
Etruscan lore in my Etruscan book—
justice had another flavor there,
buried the son to punish the father.
Drove down the Merritt Parkway
one night, alone, singing please bury me;
drove up the following afternoon
with a spade saying dig me up, someone;
dug up, found the sun so hot it burned;
craved the chocolate cool of dirt,
the pupa-life underground,
the coffin-dark of a dirt coffin.
So made, no love like mine, a boy;
turned dirt from chocolate to clay;
the clay became, one day, a cry,
and the cry turned night to day.
No love like mine; no love
transformed a hotel room into a womb
and a womb into the child's cry;
no love, no love, no love like mine.
Read in the dark, one hand on dick
Etruscan lore in my Etruscan book—
justice had another flavor there,
buried the son to punish the father.
Drove down the Merritt Parkway
one night, alone, singing please bury me;
drove up the following afternoon
with a spade saying dig me up, someone;
dug up, found the sun so hot it burned;
craved the chocolate cool of dirt,
the pupa-life underground,
the coffin-dark of a dirt coffin.
So made, no love like mine, a boy;
turned dirt from chocolate to clay;
the clay became, one day, a cry,
and the cry turned night to day.