Ghost Town Trains

By a rotted down shack Near an old railroad track, The trains rattled past and sometimes came back; There’s a thin plume of smoke From the old chimney stack, An underfed scar on a night painted black. Hangs a dead end sign On the long disused line By a hole in the earth like a bottomless mine; It’s so hard to conceive, It’s so hard to define When the darkness prevails and the stars never shine. In the mind of the tramp He sets curse on the cramp That lays waste to his joints in the cold and the damp; And he swigs aftershave In this refugee camp, By diseased, ragged flames of a paraffin lamp. The town that once stood Made of brick, glass and wood Now plays host to the ghosts like an empty town should; As a starving dog howled Just as loud as he could, An ill wind kicked in, blowing no one no good. As the dust blew away And the night turned to day The sun barely rose so the black turned to grey; Dead hearts never beat In the cold human clay And the silence imprisoned the future at bay. The ghost town trains Turned to mist in the brains, Of vagabond corpses and all their remains, Their whistles fell mute As did pistons and chains, Of ghost town trains, the ghost town trains.