Whispering Parasites

People emerge from pictures to talk to me
Like badly photoshopped torsos and heads
across portraits, magazine adverts or dust jackets.
Telling me their secrets, regrets and lies
Or chewing the fat on the paintings of Salvador Dali,
the music of Philip Glass or Aristotle’s discourse on Poetics.
It must be lonely where they are.

Animals appear occasionally, like golden retrievers
who always want to debate the principles of geometry.
Contactees often ask me to do something for them
Give messages to people, find things or commit crimes.
Sometimes I do. Sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I don’t,
even when I’ve said I would; this makes me feel bad.
But it’s hard to say sorry where they are.

Once they’ve gorged themselves on conversation
They’ll dissolve and shed their temporary skin
Leaving me fighting to remember our dialogue
Like fragments of a dream in an early morning
I’m standing in silence in an empty room
Wondering whether what happened was real
It’s lonely where I am.