Tony Bennett’s Ghost
She was drinking Mai Tais
in the Tonga Room
where she wrote me an email
that I didn’t get
because life: is like that
There was an email
and then there wasn’t an email
and I don’t understand almost everything
anyway, so
Where’d it go?
Did it get itself lost inside the haunted house of the internet?
Did it trust an honest faced porn site for directions?
Was it seduced by mermaids and dragged down beneath the waves
of a Philip K Dick envisioned sea?
How do I know?
It’s not in my inbox
and it’s not in her outbox
It’s in the just-vanished box
pre-ordering the next Taylor Swift album
drinking whiskey like a tired gladiator on its day off
It’s gone
Nobody knows where it is now
but when I’d first heard it was missing
I was immediately sure I knew what had happened to it
because I’m occasionally cocky like that
I had become convinced with the equivalent
of zero doubt that
The Ghost of Tony Bennett Stole it
Tony Bennett’s ghost stole our email!
I insisted to her almost immediately
across the internet
I could just see him, Tony Bennett’s ghost
morphing his way away from the bar
smoking a quick cigarette with a potted plant
Trading pizza jokes with Don Rickles
as he absentmindedly swiped our email
out of the internet air, somehow mistaking it
at the time for his the phone number of a 1960’s cocktail waitress
or his car keys
With me, screaming
Leave that cocktail waitress alone! and
You’re in no shape to drive!
It’s Halloween for juke-box-sake!
Give us our fucking email Tony Bennett!
I could feel myself screaming
I was rambling at this point, naturally
when she pointed out, quite correctly
It couldn’t have been Tony Bennett’s ghost
that stole our email, because
Tony Bennett’s not dead
and she was right
I knew that
Of course Tony Bennett’s alive
and we’ll always have Tom Petty
Only songs can save us now
So what the fuck stole our email?
Multiverse Johnson 