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Incantation She looks at me and says that I am the ghost of my fatherSitting on her sofa or sleeping on her love seat And I agree an tell her that his death is simply a ruse To avoid work and shirk obligations I believe he still lives Hiding in fugitive fashion Like some old Nazi who escaped justice Somewhere in South America At the dinner table she calls me by his name The incarnation of his waywardness Whenever displeasure is expressed or faults counted Whenever work goes undone and money is squandered When promises are broken and bills unpaid My father lives again It is all his fault his spirit his failures his disappoints That haunts this home and those who dwell here For he has died and left the TV on Some annoying remnant of him As if the aftershock of his life here remains And it is only the words repeated three times as you spin Around and round Fast and faster with arms extended That can exorcise this house And cleanse it of all his vices The smell of cigarettes mixed with the muskiness Of yesterdays clothes and somehow Silence the sound of his snores As he naps in the sunlight on summer afternoons In childish invocation you must say as you twirl With centrifugal speed in the center of the living room And repeat after me the tragic incantation That will force out his ghost I love your snores I love your farts I love your gone |
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