The noises never stop in this old place.
Of course at midnight chains drag down the halls,
The ghost of Farley moans behind the walls,
And the attic suicide begins to pace;
At four a.m. the murdered maiden screams,
And in the courtyard horses paw the grass;
The bishop, hanged, intones his solemn mass
In his own crypt, for his lost soul, it seems.
All through the night the spirits groan and creak;
The heartbroken bride takes her sunrise leap,
And whispers haunt the dusty bookcase shelves
At dusk. No hour goes by that doesn't speak.
The living, cranky from the lack of sleep,
Wish the dead would keep their damned deaths to themselves.
3 comments:
You'd like this song:
Die, Dead, Die
(Jody Bilyeu)
The church bells were clanging in a black November wind
Because the dead were out throwing their weightlessness around again.
You've seen any ghost movies, then you know
The dead don't always know when it's time to go
So I took it on myself that night to fill them in.
I picked up my crowbar and I walked up to Maplewood
To tilt back the stones so the dead could see them good.
I laid 'em back, shone a light on the dates,
And shouted out the names so there could be no mistake-
Commenced to kicking all the dead folk out of my neighborhood.
CHORUS:
And I sang
Die, dead, die!
Leave my town alone!
Die, dead, die!
Take a good look at your stones.
Take your bossy bones and your backward ways,
Stop infesting our trees and get back in your graves.
Die, dead, die!
Too much living to be done.
Jeremiah Moore, 1805-1861,
You're dead! Go home! You slave-holding son of a gun.
And Clara Parks, 1910-1960,
Who you trying to kid? You died when you was fifty!
We'll be dead-free by the time that I get done.
The judge sentenced me to thirty days less one
But he suspended it all since no permanent damage was done.
You see, I didn't break no stones, though the cops broke ten
Driving through the cemetery trying to bring me in-
We've got a few dead left, but I believe we've got 'em on the run.
CHORUS
I guess in certain Asian countries the dead are more benign,
But in the Western Hemisphere, they're a pain in the behind.
Die, Dead, Die!
Too much living to be done.
Great stuff...but you answer my sonnet with a much better poem, and that's kind of depressing for me, as a sensitive poet type. :(
It's fun but it's not better. There is a delightful skewing of the usual dread in yours, like Cary Grant in Topper. Funny piece. Way to make all the cliches work. The concluding couplet is funny as hell. I would say "the ghosts" maybe in the ultimate line instead of saying "dead" and then "death" not much later. I love the "damned deaths."
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