Curriculum Vitae
As though it were reluctant to be day,
.......Morning deploys a scale
.......Of rarities in gray,
And winter settles down in its chain-mail,
Victorious over legions of gold and red.
......The smokey souls of stones,
......Blunt pencillings of lead,
Pare down the world to glintless monotones
Of graveyard weather, vapors of a fen
.......We reckon through our pores.
.......Save for the garbage men,
Our children are the first ones out of doors.
Book-bagged and padded out, at mouth and nose
.......They manufacture ghosts,
.......George Washington's and Poe's,
Banquo's, the Union and Confederate hosts',
And are themselves the ghosts, file cabinet gray,
.......Of some departed us,
.......Signing our lives away
On ferned and parslied windows of a bus.
poem by Anthony Evan Hecht
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Born As Ghosts
The hills find peace
Locked armed guard posts
Safe from the screams
Of the children born as ghosts
Gates guns and alarms
Shape the calm of the dawn
Peering down into the basin
Where death lives on
Where young run foaming at the mouth with hate
Where burning batons beat the freezing who shake
Under the toxic sunsets they dine and toast
Their walls deny the terror faced by the children
Born as ghosts
Born as ghosts
One book and forty ghosts
Stuffed in a room
The school as a tomb
Where home is a wasteland
Taste the razor wire
And thought is locked in the womb
The tales that shocks the lives off the screen
Born as ghosts
song performed by by Rage Against The Machine
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Two Ghosts In The Graveyard
Two ghosts in a graveyard
Two stones in a row they are
Two lost in a blue car
Can't boast about who we are
New streets and iron bars kept behind the walls
Two ghosts in a graveyard
Down on a corner
A breeze of autumn
There's no tomorrow
The past forgotten
Well who writes the poem then hides it
Who lights the fuse then smothers it
Again
song performed by by Nine Days from Three
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Ghost Souls
Pale ghosts against dark walls,
figures thirsting for freedom
Loveless styles force quick arrival,
one way doors heavy their souls.
Ghosts possess souls,
though dark walls do conceal.
Freedom is there
souls all cannot hear
Dimensioned freedom
exists for ghosts who thirst.
Have not these ghosts discovered
contrasting love within infinite darkness?
poem by Elizabeth Wiles
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Unicorns
Are you uneasy about the many ghosts in the palace of fright?
The feathers in my head and body,
When the ghosts commence, and the air
Is sweeter and sweeter,
The real manners are hidden, the men are held to the end,
Only the spirit world;
He is understood as a spirit, and a genie is too much of beauty
To wish from.
I can not make my desire:
Ghosts are not read in the book world,
Hold on to the reins of the unicorns that were those ghosts.
poem by Naveed Akram
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Ghosts
Some ghosts are women,
neither abstract nor pale,
their breasts as limp as killed fish.
Not witches, but ghosts
who come, moving their useless arms
like forsaken servants.
Not all ghosts are women,
I have seen others;
fat, white-bellied men,
wearing their genitals like old rags.
Not devils, but ghosts.
This one thumps barefoot, lurching
above my bed.
But that isn't all.
Some ghosts are children.
Not angels, but ghosts;
curling like pink tea cups
on any pillow, or kicking,
showing their innocent bottoms, wailing
for Lucifer.
poem by Anne Sexton
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After Pulling Down And Rebuilding A House
OLD Ghosts, ye all are dispossess'd,
Your former house is levell'd now;
Another house at my behest
Has lifted over yours, its brow.
But flit, old Ghosts, and live with me;
As yet we are but living hosts;
But watch the new house patiently,
You soon shall have companion Ghosts.
poem by Carolyn Clive
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The Old Magic
Gray is the sea, and the skies are gray;
They are ghosts of our blue, bright yesterday;
And gray are the breasts of the gulls that scream
Like tortured souls in an evil dream.
There is white on the wings of the sea and sky,
And white are the gulls' wings wheeling by,
And white, like snow, is the pall that lies
Where love weeps over his memories.
For the dead is dead, and its shroud is wrought
Of good unfound and of wrong unsought;
Yet from God's good magic there ever springs
The resurrection of holy things.
See--the gold and blue of our yesterday
In the eyes and the hair of a child at play;
And the spell of joy that our youth beguiled
Is woven anew in the laugh of the child.
poem by Edith Nesbit
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Ghosts in Love
"Tell me, where do ghosts in love
Find their bridal veils?"
"If you and I were ghosts in love
We'd climb the cliffs of Mystery,
Above the sea of Wails.
I'd trim your gray and streaming hair
With veils of Fantasy
From the tree of Memory.
'Tis there the ghosts that fall in love
Find their bridal veils."
poem by Vachel Lindsay
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Ghosts And Modernity
Ghosts & Modernity
The old house has been modernised the hallway, where
ghosts spooked, is now a bathroom, and since there is no
entrance one has to exit through the kitchen window on
a ladder on the wall, this is called saving space, a modern
and fun way to live. The ghosts have gone, no dark corners
and no children with imagination to see what practical
adults are blind to. Closing my eyes I can see children and
ghosts, but not as clearly as before, the kaleidoscope has
gone fuzzy with the distance and it saddens me too that
I’m the only one left to remember a draughty hallway and
the warm glow of true fairytales sprung from the mind of
the very young.
poem by Oskar Hansen
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Life in Winter's Graveyard
Walking down a muddy road
In the throes of December
Heaving through the decay
Of Spring's now frozen embers
Is there life in Winter's graveyard?
Frozen trees bereft of leaves
Stand upright in frosted death
Fields once ripe and lush with fruit
Lay still without the Summer's breath
Is there life in Winter's graveyard?
Soggy soil sloshing below my feet
Autumn's leaves have been swept away
And while I march on viciously
My eyes behold only death and gray
Is there life in Winter's graveyard?
Then comes a patch of greenery
A lush, though simple, paradise
I stop to gaze at the loveliness
Beheld before beauty-starved eyes
There is life in Winter's graveyard.
A patch of three-leaved charms
Circling the base of a withered tree
I gaze at this Springtime green
Surrounded by December's villainy.
There is life in Winter's graveyard.
Though Winter's tomb encases
Our world in a carcass' masquerade
This patch of sought-for greenery
Removes the masks from Death's charade
There is life in Winter's graveyard.
poem by Josephine J.W
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Holy Ghosts Blues
Int that island
Lives the holy ghosts
And so many people claimed
That they saw the holy ghosts
From the beach
Early in the morning
Every single day
poem by Aldo Kraas
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The Grave Yard
Vandals knocked down the gravestones in the churchyard during the night.
They didn’t give a damn about the dead, their families, or what is right.
The grave yard vandals have gone and the usual tranquillity has returned
to the field of the dead, the flattened headstones and broken urns.
The peace and quiet of the night is disturbed by an owl’s repeated hoot,
and the flapping of wings, as the Belfry’s bats come flying through.
The moon bright sky suddenly vanishes behind a darkened cloud,
as if to give a wake up sign to a transparent figure covered by a shroud.
The howling grey figure hovers over the flattened epitaphs and marble stones,
waking the dormant spirits who respond with unhappy morbid moans.
The ghosts of the old and newly departed are rising in anger this very night
to take revenge on the desecrators who broke the dark’s link with the light.
Hosts of vengeful grey blue ghosts and spirits swirl and mingle together,
and then separate to seek out the vandals in this night of damp cold weather.
With deathly haunting cries they howl and search, as they travel with the wind
through keyholes, cracks in doors and windows, they examine everything.
One by one the vandals were cornered and reminded of their shame;
continually they shout, “No harm was meant.., it was just a game.”
Swirling in the air the ghouls prodded and pulled, as they hounded them on
back to the grave yard where they would face what they had done.
Into a large dark cold tomb the weeping gravestone wreckers were driven,
with blood running from their wounds; they were not to be forgiven.
The moaning, groaning, spirits of the dead followed them into the crypt,
slamming shut the heavy door so hard it made one of the vandals shit.
The ghosts and spirits encircled the living, and raised in them pure hell,
and by daylight the following morning no one was alive to yell, or tell.
It was several days later that seven heart attack victims were discovered,
with tormented faces, mouths wide open, and eyes with coins covered.
poem by Orlando Belo
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neath A Cold Gray Tomb Of Stone
Passing by a lonesome graveyard
Everything I love is gone
Weeping as they lay my darling
Neath a cold gray tomb of stone
In this world i'm left to wander
With no one to call my own
While my precious darling's sleeping
Neath a cold gray tomb of stone
Out there in that lonesome graveyard
She is sleeping all alone
And I burried my heart with her
Neath a cold gray tomb of stone
Skies above are dark and stormy
All the sunshine,all is gone
For the while my love is sleeping
Neath a cold gray tomb of stone
My heart is dead and yet i'm living
Traveling through this world alone
I wish that I was with my darling
Neath a cold gray tomb of stone
song performed by by Hank Williams
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The Ghosts
The ghosts of not repentant souls
Wander in the quiet woods night.
Only chilling cries of the owls
Cause the lightest fright.
Flying Dutchman frightens seamen,
Its sight is a portent of doom.
It was told by John Leyden
Sinful souls went to gloom.
Ghosts dwell in the hills.
Climbers know a ghost can kill.
To some they help to cross the river,
But seeing them you would shiver.
Haunting cities, haunting countries…
Are they humans eye illusion?
Are they really verities?
It looks they come to make pollution.
Ghosts are here, ghosts are there!
It seems they are everywhere.
©Larisa Rzhepishevska (Odessa, Ukraine)
The 8th of August,2011
poem by Larisa Rzhepishevska
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Red Sky: The Good Shepherd and I
Jesus, the good shepherd, once said:
'When it is evening, ye say,
It will be fair weather:
For the sky is red.
And in the morning,
It will be foul weather today:
For the sky is red and lowering.'
Evening red and morning gray
Are the signs of a bonny day.
Evening red:
'Shepherd's delight, '
Daddy said.
That is to say,
'Red sky at night,
Shepherd's delight.'
Evening gray and morning red
Bring down rain on the farmer's head.
Morning red:
'Shepherd's warning, '
Daddy said.
That is to say,
'Red sky in the morning,
Shepherd's warning.'
Evening gray and morning red
Brought down rain on my father's head.
My father, a seasoned farmer,
Could discern the face of the sky.
O Lord, my shepherd, so can I.
poem by Monty Gilmer
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One Day Nearer Spring
The weather cold this morning it is only two degrees
And a thick fog through the woodland, I can hardly see the trees
And the wildborn birds are silent there is scarcely any breeze
It's a day for woolly jumper though not cold enough to freeze.
For Winter in Victoria the weather seems quite dry
And the mornings foggy and quite cold allowing for July
And the fog doesn't lift till mid morning and the sun shines through the gray
And you see the grayness of your breath on a chilly Winter
day.
But only yesterday I saw male blackbird searching for a nesting site
On the ivy along galvanize fence in mid afternoon sunlight
And from there he flew to camellia tree as he pondered on where best
Might be the safest place for him and his mate to build their year's first nest.
The last leaves off of deciduous tree lay scattered on the ground
And in the grayness of the dawn the silence is profound,
The ghost like trees shrouded in gray and the birds refuse to sing
But every Winter day that dawns is one day nearer Spring.
poem by Francis Duggan
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You Set This Mood For Me To Scare You
It's demonical.
It's demonical.
Slow breaths heard and creaking on the steps.
It's demonical.
Closing doors and cats sniffing for rats.
It's demonical.
Breezing winds through trees on windows tap.
It's demonical.
And all alone you feel unsafe and trapped.
It's demonical.
As ghosts boo,
A devil pursues.
'Darkness looms upon the land.'
As ghosts boo.
'Shadows from the corners start to stand.'
As ghosts boo.
'Bats begin to fly and then you scream.
As ghosts boo.
'And an evil devil starts to sing...
You Set This Mood For Me To Scare You'
Slow breaths heard and creaking on the steps.
It's demonical.
Closing doors and cats sniffing for rats.
It's demonical.
Breezing winds through trees on windows tap.
It's demonical.
And all alone you feel unsafe and trapped.
It's demonical.
As ghosts boo,
A devil pursues.
'Darkness looms upon the land.'
As ghosts boo.
'Shadows from the corners start to stand.'
As ghosts boo.
'Bats begin to fly and then you scream.
As ghosts boo.
'And an evil devil starts to sing...
You Set This Mood For Me To Scare You'
It's demonical.
It's demonical.
It's demonical.
'But...
You Set This Mood For Me To Scare You'
poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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Old Trails
(WASHINGTON SQUARE)
I met him, as one meets a ghost or two,
Between the gray Arch and the old Hotel.
“King Solomon was right, there’s nothing new,”
Said he. “Behold a ruin who meant well.”
He led me down familiar steps again,
Appealingly, and set me in a chair.
“My dreams have all come true to other men,”
Said he; “God lives, however, and why care?
“An hour among the ghosts will do no harm.”
He laughed, and something glad within me sank.
I may have eyed him with a faint alarm,
For now his laugh was lost in what he drank.
“They chill things here with ice from hell,” he said;
“I might have known it.” And he made a face
That showed again how much of him was dead,
And how much was alive and out of place.
And out of reach. He knew as well as I
That all the words of wise men who are skilled
In using them are not much to defy
What comes when memory meets the unfulfilled.
What evil and infirm perversity
Had been at work with him to bring him back?
Never among the ghosts, assuredly,
Would he originate a new attack;
Never among the ghosts, or anywhere,
Till what was dead of him was put away,
Would he attain to his offended share
Of honor among others of his day.
“You ponder like an owl,” he said at last;
“You always did, and here you have a cause.
For I’m a confirmation of the past,
A vengeance, and a flowering of what was.
“Sorry? Of course you are, though you compress,
With even your most impenetrable fears,
A placid and a proper consciousness
Of anxious angels over my arrears.
“I see them there against me in a book
As large as hope, in ink that shines by night
Surely I see; but now I’d rather look
At you, and you are not a pleasant sight.
“Forbear, forgive. Ten years are on my soul,
And on my conscience. I’ve an incubus:
My one distinction, and a parlous toll
To glory; but hope lives on clamorous.
“’Twas hope, though heaven I grant you knows of what—
The kind that blinks and rises when it falls,
Whether it sees a reason why or not—
That heard Broadway’s hard-throated siren-calls;
“’Twas hope that brought me through December storms,
To shores again where I’ll not have to be
A lonely man with only foreign worms
To cheer him in his last obscurity.
“But what it was that hurried me down here
To be among the ghosts, I leave to you.
My thanks are yours, no less, for one thing clear:
Though you are silent, what you say is true.
“There may have been the devil in my feet,
For down I blundered, like a fugitive,
To find the old room in Eleventh Street.
God save us!—I came here again to live.”
We rose at that, and all the ghosts rose then,
And followed us unseen to his old room.
No longer a good place for living men
We found it, and we shivered in the gloom.
The goods he took away from there were few,
And soon we found ourselves outside once more,
Where now the lamps along the Avenue
Bloomed white for miles above an iron floor.
“Now lead me to the newest of hotels,”
He said, “and let your spleen be undeceived:
This ruin is not myself, but some one else;
I haven’t failed; I’ve merely not achieved.”
Whether he knew or not, he laughed and dined
With more of an immune regardlessness
Of pits before him and of sands behind
Than many a child at forty would confess;
And after, when the bells in Boris rang
Their tumult at the Metropolitan,
He rocked himself, and I believe he sang.
“God lives,” he crooned aloud, “and I’m the man!”
He was. And even though the creature spoiled
All prophecies, I cherish his acclaim.
Three weeks he fattened; and five years he toiled
In Yonkers,—and then sauntered into fame.
And he may go now to what streets he will—
Eleventh, or the last, and little care;
But he would find the old room very still
Of evenings, and the ghosts would all be there.
I doubt if he goes after them; I doubt
If many of them ever come to him.
His memories are like lamps, and they go out;
Or if they burn, they flicker and are dim.
A light of other gleams he has to-day
And adulations of applauding hosts;
A famous danger, but a safer way
Than growing old alone among the ghosts.
But we may still be glad that we were wrong:
He fooled us, and we’d shrivel to deny it;
Though sometimes when old echoes ring too long,
I wish the bells in Boris would be quiet.
poem by Edwin Arlington Robinson
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Class Distinction
A quiet house where quiet ghosts
haunt quiet rooms but silently
The Ghosts respect their living hosts
and treat them most respectfully.
They can’t go back they won’t go on.
Confused by their predicament,
they wait until the daylights gone
before they show they are present.
They do not wish to cause alarm.
as common ghosts are wont to do.
All part of their well bred charm.
Though they are dead they hold the view
that no aristocratic ghost
should stoop to frightening their host.
26-Mar-08
poem by Ivor Or Ivor.e Hogg
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Yesterdays Ghosts
Everywhere I go;
there are the ghosts of yesterday.
They inhabit everything we see.
Their presence is felt
within every step we take.
The ghosts of yesterday
watch over us.
We may not be able to see them,
but we at times we know they are there.
Who are these ghosts of yesterday,
friends, relations, acquaintances
we met along the way.
I do not know the answer
and it is not for me to say.
All I know is they are there,
the ghosts of yesterday
19-20 October 2008
poem by David Harris
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