I considered just putting this in the Poetry Corner, but... well, it's a little long for that. I think the title says it all.

Lament of a Headless Man

You would think being a ghost
Is bad enough by itself.
I ask you, then, to imagine
Wandering the world a bodiless specter
And doing it without your head.

Please consider
How all of the senses save one
Are crammed into an eight-pound lump
Of meat and bone on rickety framework.
Barely balanced, the head somehow manages
Not to roll off your shoulders at the slightest provocation.

You know the people who think they’re clever
When they declare on forgetting something,
“I’d forget my head if it wasn’t attached?”
Words cannot express how much I hate those people.

I have no memory of what caused me to lose my head.
There are a hundred ways that the neck can be severed
And the head go rolling off into the endless night.
It was probably one of them; after all,
I don’t think you can be born without a head.

I rose from the grave – not of my own volition, mind you,
There is no way I would choose to be a headless man –
And wandered off to haunt the night. I wasn’t one of those ghosts
Who cannot leave the graveyard, or who must haunt
Somewhere important to them, like their old home
Or the place where they died.
I was a ghost without a cause, a wandering haunt.
It took me a while to realize something was missing.

Yes, it is entirely possible not to realize you’re missing your head
If you happen to be a restless spirit. When you are a ghost,
Your senses are distributed across the entirety of your being.
I see without eyes, hear without ears… as for the other three,
Being incorporeal makes the senses of touch, taste and smell
A bit unnecessary. Speech is a matter of concentration
Rather than moving lips.

You are likely the better for not knowing exactly
How I am writing this.

The day I realized I had no head was a day otherwise notable
For being unimportant; as I recall, I happened to walk by a river
And realized my reflection was shorter than it should be. I promptly
Spun on a heel and retraced my steps, hoping
That I had just dropped it next to a tombstone somewhere.

No such luck. But then you guessed that, didn’t you?
I would not be complaining like this if I had found it.

I lose track of time easily as a ghost; the ways the living use
To keep track of time – hunger, boredom, weariness, the passing
Of sun and moon – mean little to the dead. But I made an effort
To calculate how long I spent hunting for my missing head.
I gave up the math somewhere around five hundred years.
Five hundred years of constantly scouring the world, interrogating the
Living who cross my path, searching for the lost part of my being.

My life before my death is a mystery to me, so I have no clues
As to how I lost my head in the first place. We dead rarely
Remember our days as the living. Our horrid state
Would not improve greatly if we knew what we had lost
In the process of joining the ghastly crew. All I can recall
Is that it was a blade – not a cannon, a rope, or a horrible
Accident of the plow – that cost me the flesh and bone of my neck.
I think it was war, but for all I know I could have picked a fight
With exactly the wrong man. Or woman, or scarecrow.

The living are not much help in my endless quest for my head.
When they see my decapitated form pass down the road,
Every time without fail they scream and run. Damn you,
Washington Irving; you and your stories have made us
The headless figures of absolute fear, even if we mean no harm.

Ichabod Crane was asking for everything he got.

Still, I cannot give up my hunt for my lost head. It burns at me
Like a hunger or thirst, the only thing that drives me as I continue
My unnatural existence. If I find it again, I may well be able
To return to my grave and sleep once again. And I assure you,
I would do that now if I had the chance. This is not fun.

It would be interesting to know if somewhere out there,
My head is lamenting its lack of a body.