Phantom's Father Poem by Jack Ashenden

My heart is a phantom of its former self,
a blackened mass of darkest thoughts,
yet when I look upon you and your bad health
I begin to remember all that you have taught.

There was a time when I would smile and laugh,
a time when desire and ambition did not haunt my soul.
That time was when I sat and played with you by the hearth
and you did make my spirit whole.

The bitter nectar in my veins thins to a ghostly shadow of its former self,
and I hate this lust which the devils host forces upon my tortured soul.
Yet your presence completes me, soothes my mind, dear father
and when we speak I feel no pull towards disaster.

You cast out that which haunts me father,
and the phantom is a challenged master.