The Old Western Burial Ground can be found
on Fayette and Green Streets in Baltimore City.
Cars and trucks most often mute the shrieking sound
of a dreadful dead man’s moans for human pity.
3/3/2020
taken from A Scary Place to Sleep written 10/3/18
for Rithimus Divisa 2 Poetry Contest
Sponsor: Greg Barden
A Scary Place to Sleep
Imagine a skull screaming from the dead
where a murdered minister is buried.
The screams have caused some folks to lose their head
as all within their ears the screams are carried.
The Skull of Cambridge has been covered thick and deep
in cement, for drowning out the screams.
In this scary place the great Poe also sleeps
and spirits of the darkness reign supreme.
The Old Western Burial Ground can be found
on Fayette and Green Streets in Baltimore City.
Cars and trucks most often mute the shrieking sounds
of this dreadful dead man’s moans for human pity.
In the darkened mists of a city scene
a homeless person sleeps upon a grate,
awakening to the noise of a muffled scream
from the direction of the cemetery gate.
10/3/18
The Old Western Burial Ground is a haunted graveyard in an area of Baltimore, Maryland.
STRAND SELECT F
Brian Strand, Sponsor
A macabre garden
rank with smell of green moss.
Silent mouths murmur nothing
as visitors snap and click
awed in reverence of the raven poet.
The Old Western Burial Ground
Greene and Fayette Streets in Baltimore
a rotten Poe rests here
his beloved decayed Virginia.
Bone to bones on bones timber in mute darkness.
Nissans and GMC trucks
vibrate their eternal slumber
lying beneath city stories of noise
like fossils from the carriage age.
Does any life still whimper in the din?
Can we say it is a lovely graveyard?
Do we admire sentinels to the mournful torture of fate
pain, dying, life, calling them
historic to cherish forever?
Forever is each night
as nearby
homeless lie sleeping
on sidewalks.
2/28/18