ghost hope

Mars has gone around the sun
the world pleads for comfort
inside me is the ghost of a yellow man
telling stories
the locusts have returned to us
in our cramped mutilations
what you would have us know
my friend is dead on another world
they call this metaphor
they explain these things
as a well-mapped psyche
I am still at odds out of a job
on this lincoln-earth
twice in transit around our star
the martian ghost gives me
hope but is
dead dead?
or is it a story of the locusts
dreaming?