So many abandoned buildings…
so many empty shells…
so many places open
and exposed to the elements…
so many ghost towns
that once used to thrive
but have long since died…
so many towns and communities
that are still remembered
and thought of fondly by name
that are in desperate need
of being revived…
so many businesses, so many people,
so many livelihoods that have
had to close their doors and move on…
so many once proud industries
that have slowly but surely
become outdated and lost…
so many, too many, churches still standing
where congregations no longer pray…
so many, too many, schools and playground
where children are no longer taught
and no longer play…
so many, too many, houses
that were once homes to families
can be found with their doors open wide
that are no longer sanctuaries
where anybody chooses to live…
there are so many, too many, places
that have lost their identities
which could once again be
revitalized and exorcised
of the bad spirits that still
walk the streets and echo
throughout the empty spaces
that you can find
devoid of any human life
all around the world,
that are now nothing more than ghost towns.
ghosts
My Poem ‘A Ghost’s Story’
Some people think
that ghosts are all in the mind…
some people think
that we see what we want to see…
some people think
that the stories of hauntings
are more often than not
just a bunch of lies…
some people are just unable
to entertain the possibility
of somebody continuing to live
though they may not technically be “alive”…
ghosts, spirits, people remain on Earth
and they talk to us all every day –
but sometimes not in ways
that are easy to believe.
When a human spirit leaves its corporeal life
and is set free of its physical body,
a natural change and transition occurs…
when a human heart stops beating,
another source of spirit grows stronger
and we are given a choice:
to follow our instincts
and to journey to a place
beyond human understanding and comprehension,
or stay on Earth and be shown,
and get to interact with,
the living of humanity
within an existence of limitless-time.
Everybody has a reason to be who and what they are –
some people when they die become songs,
and some people when they die becomes stars;
some people’s spirit live on
within the pages of a book
long after their audible-voice can no longer be heard,
forever inhabiting a story’s every letter of every word;
every form of life, when it fully becomes its own spirit,
lives on – and the more that we explore other planets
in the galaxy I am sure that we will encounter
alien ghosts, also –
and I personally would not be surprised
if one day someone from Earth
finds themselves haunted by the figure
of a dead Martian while living
upon the surface of Mars.
Everybody has a story that they are at the centre of…
some peoples’ stories do not end
when their physical body gives-out…
everybody had a moment during their life,
and after death, when they have to shake-off
who they used to be and become someone else completely new –
the draw of an enticing bright light
is hard not to race towards like a moth…
some peoples’ idea of life after death
to some might be thought of as “heaven”,
and to others that same idea
might be their exact version of “hell”…
life when you are alive is different
to the life that awaits us all
on the other side of the threshold of our twilight
that we have to cross when our time
as a living and breathing human comes to an end…
it is said that when we die
we write the most beautiful poetry…
it is important to say goodbye
to loved-ones and friends…
every person, every-thing lives on…
everybody and everything changes –
but nothing ever truly ends,
and when each of us pass on
our story changes also,
from one like that of a caterpillar
to one like that of a butterfly –
and that is the essence of a ghost’s story.
My Poem ‘The Ghost Host’
On the sandy beaches of Normandy, France…
still sailing the oceans and seas…
men, women, animals, children, continue on –
some free to act independently,
some stuck in a cycle forevermore
as if repeating the steps of a spectral dance…
as if conjured back to life,
even for a short time,
some people still live on
in the words that they have written –
it is as if the simple act of reading
and letting someone’s voice be heard again
allows them to once again breathe.
While walking the fields of old battle-grounds…
while sitting in the room of a house
thought to be haunted…
while walking through a grave-yard
without a sound to be heard all-around…
while thinking about somewhere and someone,
whose bones and whose life-force still resides there,
every time my senses and my intuition go into over-drive
and I can feel, and I can almost see the face,
and hear the voice of a passed-on spirit –
someone who is still bound to Earth and to its gravity
and who have not chosen, for whatever reason,
to ascend to heaven.
Long-dead soldiers
still walking through the woods
of the state of Georgia, in America;
homeless ghosts still walk the streets of New York City
hoping that perhaps in death
someone might notice them, finally;
patients still walk the wards
of long-since abandoned hospitals
as if they were a zombie;
homes that were once taverns, in England,
still have patrons waiting
to order a drink at imaginary bars.
When we die, I believe that
we leave more behind than what we realize;
when our spirit leaves our body,
I believe that there are sensitive people
who can tell that we are still on Earth –
as if our echo-self has the pungent smell of burnt toast;
when we close our eyes for the last time,
I do not think that that in any way, shape, or form,
is our final goodbye;
when you live a life, like many of us do,
and you share a world with other people
it is only natural to not want to leave that place –
and there are those among the living
who know that, and who recognize that want and that need,
and who choose to open themselves up
to being the conduit and the host of a ghost.
My Poem ‘Scream!’
Silence is broken…
the quiet is no more…
sound is made to say
what cannot be spoken…
a child that has not yet learned
how to talk is thinking, feeling,
and wanting something so much
that they are throwing everything
that they can reach to the floor.
Why do we scream?
Where does all that energy,
and where does all that deafening noise come from?
To me, there is something primal in a shriek;
to me, there is nothing like a noise
that seems to come out of nowhere
to attract your attention
and implode your concentration.
There are people who openly seek to be
scared out of their skin;
there are some people whose heart’s
race when they are on a beach
and they see in the distance
the unmistakable shape of a shark’s dorsal-fin;
there are some people who love
to take their senses to their outer-limits;
there are some people
who at the prospect of there being a ghost
in a house they are staying in
would be so petrified
that they would be scared beyond their wits.
Ghost-stories; camp-fire tales;
first-hand experiences recanted in great detail;
scary movies; myths of spectres
dressed in period-clothing
whose faces are so devoid of life they are pale;
to some people, to be shown something dark
and other-worldly horrific
is the greatest and the most visceral of thrills.
When the adrenaline surges through your body…
when your appendages spasm
and you literally jump out of your seat…
when you smile and perhaps even laugh out-loud
out of complete and utter shock and surprise,
brought on by the fear brought to life
by the images that you see…
that is when, even as a full-grown adult,
you can become like a child again
who is unsteady on their feet.
It’s cathartic to face your fears;
it’s good to let out what you are feeling
from time to time;
it’s incredible to see things you have never seen;
it’s amazing how a slight scare
can make your thoughts clear;
it’s phenomenal to see evil be defeated
when it crosses the line;
it’s exhilarating, sometimes,
to find yourself lost in a moment of comfort
and then have all that taken away
when something gives rise
to an almighty scream!
My Poem ‘Forest of Forever’
Many years ago now,
in my forest of forever,
I stopped, I stood,
I looked, I dreamed,
I listened to the song
that played as the wind blew
through the trees,
I was alone but surrounded
by ancient spirits –
even though there was no other
man, woman, or child
around to be found,
I knew that I was being visited
by the ghosts of poets
and the muses of fellow dreamers –
it was as if I were communing
with my younger-self,
as well as with my future-self
and the one writing this poem:
the one who sees
and the one who believes
that every thing that happens
happens for a reason.
As I write, as I think back,
as I use the infinite sight,
as I remember all the steps
that I have taken along my path,
I am again in the woods of yesterday
and breathing in the air
and being intoxicated by the smell of pine –
I am again standing in the sunlight,
as if I have managed to leap back in time,
and I remember all that I felt
and all that walked with me
when my poetic gift was still in its infancy,
and I can know and I can remember
things that have not yet happened
but have already happened
that I have been immortalized in my poetry.
I see in my memory a land far-away;
I see the beautiful face of the one person
in the entire who is the true light of my day;
I look in front of me and I see
the man who would be me;
I turn my head and I see a boy
with blond curly-hair
who was once and will always be me;
I see an incomplete circle;
I see an unfinished masterpiece;
I see a continuously ever-changing world;
I see a shadowed version of myself
looking at me from afar
from their vantage-point
from which they can see every incarnation of me.
I cannot hold-on to my flashback for too long
before I flash-forward again;
I continue to write as if all that was
had always been just the words
that I had written by my own hand
with my own pen;
I look out of my bedroom window
and I see a floating white feather
and I am reminded of the falling leaves
that will be always frozen in time
when I return in my mind
to my forest of forever.
My Poem ‘Missing Letters’
Messages can be exchanged
in an instant;
feelings can be communicated
with a heart-beat;
some letters
that never reached
their intended recipient
and destination
could be those
of the highest importance;
gone are the days
when you would literally
have to wait weeks for a single reply –
however, I still believe
that the most powerful of contacts
that there could ever be
are those that are made
by using your feet.
First-person perspective,
face-to-face,
eye-to-eye and infinitely expressive
is always the best,
especially when it does not wholly
require the assistance of a satellite
orbiting in space –
but in this day and age,
we who are living here on Earth
are so lucky to have
all the means of technology at our fingertips.
I must admit that I too would feel bereft
if I could not speak what I am thinking,
as well as express myself
via my facial-expressions –
like the blowing
the one I love a goodnight kiss.
The written word and the printed white page
is a thing of beauty, to me –
but the power of text and the images
of a back-lit and bright screen,
I must admit, are, to me,
a draw, and to one
I am like that a moth to a flame.
I adore books and stories
written be fantastic and phenomenal writers,
but what you can see and share online
on the internet is an incredibly evocative,
vivid, and epic, world-changing domain.
I recently read a news story online
about the discovery of an amazing find:
a leather trunk from the 17th century
had been unearthed that contained
over two thousand letters –
most of the letters that have been translated
tell stories of a people
and what they were feeling and thinking
at a particularly eventful
and momentous time in their life,
while most of them thus far
still remain a mystery
as to what they say –
and I truly believe that such a discovery
is one of a treasure
that may never again come to light,
because those letters are fragments of time.
Letters can be lost, misplaced, forgotten about
sent out across the sea in a bottle –
however, messages that are sent electronically
follow you wherever you go
and are like coin thrown into a well
that never reaches the watery bottom.
Our electronic messages are like our own
digital ghosts and shadows
that we are responsible for;
our electronic images and profiles
can be seen by everyone and anyone,
24-hours a day, from the last light of dusk
to the first light of a new dawn.
There is a lot to be thankful for
about living in the times that we do;
we have discovered answers to questions
that our ancestors prayed to god
that they wished they knew;
there are things that we all do well –
but we as a species, in my opinion,
can all do better;
we may all find what we have been looking for
all our lives if we too were
to somehow miraculously discover,
or rediscover, buried over time
a treasure trove
of lost or missing letters.
My Poem ‘All Halloween’
Almost everyone loves the season of Halloween;
all through October to November,
everywhere you look Pumpkins, skeletons,
and images of apparitions
adorn the fronts of houses on every street;
children get excited to dress up
and go trick-or-treating,
adults of all ages watch scary movies on TV
about ghosts, demons, Vampires, werewolves,
and stories about places and creatures
to be feared as if they were real,
because they almost defy imagining.
I do not think
that there is another country on Earth
who celebrates Halloween
better than North America;
I don’t think that there are no other people
other than Americans
who understand that Halloween
is meant to be a season of celebration;
I do not think
that there is anywhere else in the world,
besides perhaps Transylvania,
where stories of the world beyond this one
inspire daydreams around a campfire
that set alight the feverish
dark creations of the human imagination.
The dead are remembered;
the saints are worshiped;
the living are cherished;
the costumes that people choose
to dress up in are always wonderfully
and darkly embellished;
the night of Halloween
is anticipated by some
with as much joy as Christmas;
some people give generously
to their young sweet-toothed
trick-or-treaters that come a-calling,
while some people just do not
understand the reason for all the fuss.
For some people,
Halloween is the favourite time of the year;
for some people,
every day is Halloween –
and to them it is not just once a year;
for some people,
Halloween feels like reality is reflecting
their inner-most thoughts and dreams;
for some people,
enjoying tales of witches, spectres,
magic, and the emotions and the feelings
that bubble-up to the surface,
that make the hairs on the back of your neck stand on-end,
and the stories that make you jump with fright,
is what Halloween is all about.
Mark The Poet 