Ghost

You speculate on what survives within
This shuttered shattered sepulcher you see
Where the night does not end nor day begin
Where dappled in the twilight shadows play

Stained with the stinging unguent of abuse
Descending generations death and sin
In living death one soul still flickers there
No explanation given nor excuse

Too many things to tell so none to say
Tethered by taproot deeply dungeoned where
A crust once human to the dust gives way
Emily Dickinsonian recluse

You pass by on the sidewalk and know not
The tales these darkened windows weep tonight
Heavy debt a head-shaking attorney
The living bearing what the dead forgot

Birth-broken wings flap their futility
Futureless featureless backwards journey
Bright sunshine on all sides but here no light
There never was nor will there ever be

In rotting graciousness the grave lies deep
A black hole where the doomed and damned await
Dark ancestors scold from unquiet sleep
Unending grief inherited from fate

The ghost which haunts this haunted house is me

+Steven Curtis Lance



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