What do I know?
living in dreams
chasing the space
the void between
stars and lamplight
chasing love songs
baptismal in beer
running wild tonight
chasing the smoke
an electrified prophet
plays six strings
ghost town blues
I saw one with the placidness of death
A necropolis pummelled, with mallets of sorrow,
By the brutishness of Silence and numbed by the
Prickly shafts of premature grey hair, sickly and odorous.
Even Tokyo, normally awash with people and pets,
Pots and pans, observed the rules of siesta.
I witnessed it —a virus so vicious —!
A plague that humbled one and all —
Troglodytes we!
I can't believe
that all this time
everything was happening
in my mind
ghost town
of a life
that I dreamed
it was mine.
Jessica
The town, betrayed by time passed, lies forsaken.
Lost, lain memories, like tumble weeds, awaken
To the prod of windy wisps, and roll willy nilly,
Hazardously rendering any hope of revival as silly.
Whispers of the past, wind borne, quickly fade,
Always out of hearing, always too soft, under the breath, played.
But, echoing clearly, that what once was, could never be again.
The once vibrant colors and sounds of the town, fade to a stain refrain.
Like tombstones snarled by weeds in cemetery,
The buildings cast shadows gnarled by ancestry
Abandoned, betrayed, cast aside by the hands of time,
The town's beauty unkempt, now shrouded in dust and grime.
The bustling life and laughter that once filled the air,
Are now hushed solemn, reeking with a sense of deep despair,
Ghosts, that are now the only permanent residents,
Drive tourists away, with their hostile reticence.
Abandonment, is all hope lost, forlorn and tossed away,
Into a pile of junk to rot, rust, crumble, flay, decay.
Ghost Town
David J Walker
Arriving via stagecoach dreams
The host of the ghost town hotel
Says most of the guests
remain to be seen
remain in the same rooms/refrain from
complaining about the moaning /groaning
all night long
Who are you looking for
He says
I don’t remember anymore
I says
As I fade from the dream
There’s a stage every night
He says real polite like
From the porch of the local saloon
Knowing he will see me
Coming and going again
Real soon
If you need to ease your mind,
With silence ever vast.
The mail, a place where you will find,
The ghosts of retail past.
Starting in the parking lot,
With donut tire tracks,
Many empty days have brought,
The weeds out from the cracks.
The Mall is now a ghost town,
Near every store is closed.
Window paper falling down,
With empty space exposed.
Sears had left some years ago,
And Cinabon moved on,
Auntie Anne’s was next to go.
Even the Gap is gone!
The court of food, it still remains,
And filled with empty seats.
All that fill the waiting lanes,
Is tumbleweed receipts.
The escalator now will groan,
Up to the second story.
Where Spencer Gifts, it stands alone,
Of stores with former glory.
Roaming ghosts of those we’d gawk,
And those we had adorn.
But now only those that walk,
Old Ladies in the Morn.
If you take a certain stride,
You can hear them call.
The souls of valley girls inside,
This ghost town of a mall.
Ghost Town
As I walk past the sagging wooden sentinels, silence is deafening. Only the haunting sound of wind moving through its skeletal remains.
Once, a place of hope and dreams now sits alone and forgotten. Echoes of voices from the past fill the hollow structures once thriving with life.
Memories will always remain as nature continues to swallow the last vestiges of a bygone past. Soon, the earth will take back what man once forged from wood and stone.
The little town sits by the road to nowhere
Now a muted grey, the empty shells forgotten
A sagging door, an empty window, a broken stair
Sad reminders of those who used to lived there
In the dust a single footprint left by some passerby
Did he stop like me, to remember what used to be
To listen to the desert wind giving a mournful sigh
And bid the town, and her past, a last goodbye
a gentle wind blows ~~~
the tumbleweeds are rolling
a lifeless ghost town ~~~
I got hallway out of town today
but I couldn't leave
before I faced the last of my demons
So I turned around and went back
Drawn by the emptiness I'd avoided for months
Four walls held up by cement
that might as well be
made of bones and ash
from all the skeletons I've left buried there
I'd burn it down if I had a match
to incinerate the memories I've tried hard to erase
But you're gone and so am I
thought not in quite the same way
My questions were answered and I realize now
that the building wit the skeleton bones
will never be the same
This hollow space in my heart
Is more than just within my heart
You scarred my soul, you chained me down to the hell you brewed for me
I fell for you, yet you stepped back, as an illusion traveling through space. time.
I walked these passages before ...
A time long ago, I felt this horror and hatred, this pain and suffering...
But now I see a immence light, shining from miles away
As I near this light I find myself making out the figure of a Girl ...
Her cheaks soaked in salt, her body trembling from the cold ...
I saw her, and I saw myself.
Standing in the among the ruins of what
Used to be a thriving little gold fever town
I swore I heard music and laughter coming
From the half-moon saloon, I walked around
But nobody could be found still I could of
Sworn I just saw a cowboy walk chasing
An Apache in a cloud of dust well I felt a
Chill run up and down my spine and it is a
Hot, hot day in August maybe it's the heat
And the sun getting to me, I’d say that if
I just didn't stumble up on crooked head
Man swinging from dead man's tree...
Apparently they don't call this a GHOST TOWN
For nothing, and they're everywhere, one
Here and one there, voices of the dammed
Keep telling me you will not leave this town
I try to run for my life but they gather around
Me and pull me to the ground, now here I am
Confused as I go stumbling around this
Cursed town, this GHOST TOWN...
Whose blood do you have on your hands...?
You stare off into space with cold and evil dark
Eyes...
Does the gun in your hand make you a man...?
Now what cowboy, now that I’m roped and tied
Surrounded by your hell hounds in this devil desert
Town...
Apparently they call this a GHOST TOWN just because
It’s a GHOST TOWN!
Standing in the among the ruins of what
Used to be a thriving little gold fever town
I swore I heard music and laughter coming
From the half-moon saloon, I walked around
But nobody could be found still I could of
Sworn I just saw a cowboy walk chasing
An apache in a cloud of dust well I felt a
Chill run up and down my spine and it is a
Hot, hot day in August maybe it's the heat
And the sun getting to me, I’d say that if
I just didn't stumble up on crooked head
Man swinging from dead man's tree...
Apparently they don't call this a GHOST TOWN
For nothing, and they're everywhere, one
Here and one there, voices of the dammed
Keep telling me you will not leave this town
I try to run for my life but they gather around
Me and pull me to the ground, now here I am
Confused as I go stumbling around this
Cursed town, this GHOST TOWN...
Whose blood do you have on your hands...?
You stare off into space with cold and evil dark
Eyes...
Does the gun in your hand make you a man...?
Now what cowboy, now that I’m roped and tied
Surrounded by your hell hounds in this devil dessert
Town...
Apparently they call this a GHOST TOWN just because
It’s a GHOST TOWN!
While wand'ring ghost town scenes of memories
Loose mind like shutters bang in channeled thoughts
Old haunting spirits restless and distraught
Now roam deserted streets like tumbleweeds
Dirt devils funnel, scattering dead seeds
As rattling chains of broken bonds stretch taut
Dark tortured faceless shadows, though not sought
Appear in screenless windows taunting me
Behind saloons in alleys where we played
Lie trash cans spilled of hope and broken dreams
Discarded remnants of relationships
Have all but disappeared from time's decay
Those youthful days spent by the sun dried stream
Are now recalled in silent somberness
an original poem by the "poemdog" Daniel Turner
It was
a dalliance
this bucolic lost town,
just ephemeral my visit,
petrichor scents of fresh rain, just fallen,
birds songs a harbinger of me,
oh serendipity,
efflorescence
caress.
I feel
the erstwhile past
in the vacant buildings,
the sadness an epiphany,
beyond nature calls my propinquity
but I stay and stroll empty streets,
redolent with flowers,
this demesne lost
in time.
____________________________
March 18, 2016
Poetry/Rictameter/Ghost Town
Copyright Protected ID, 03-769-605-18
All Rights Reserved, 2022, Constance La France
For the Standard contest, A Day In A Town,
sponsor, Nayda Evette Negron, Judged 03/2016
First Place
Submitted into the Standard contest, Give me a Ricktameter!
sponsor, M.L. Kiser, Judged 02/16/2022
First Place
Related Poems