Barren wastelands:

They are what

Men in this direction

Know.

 

They built the pillars of Honesty,

They did what they were told:

They showed their hearts,

 

And the Ones who beckoned them

To Show

Their

Hearts,

 

Punished the same.

 

It was foolish, wasn’t it,

that they chose to be

born in This Time,

This Place?

 

Stupid, wasn’t it,

to become mere content

for a Poet’s Rhyme,

all for the crime,

of showing Their Face.

 

They ought to have

Known,

that this was no Time

for those intimate, to

Blather.

 

The Ghost is a

Stone, that between

things Human,

and Dead, embraces the

Latter.

 

The same cold rock,

Alone,

that smashes Hearts,

and Faces, and soulful

Matter,

alike strikes thee,

Intoned,

as a Bell very Large,

and Frigid, in a hellish, cackling

Clatter.

 

Don’t you see their Eyes,

out in the city?

Those lifeless acts,

and deadly pacts,

by which all silently

Agree

to Say, and to Be

Nothing?

 

Didn’t you catch the techno-fever,

by which blood dries solid,

and with it, all noble attempts to

Connect,

to Feel, and to Kiss even

Something?

 

Did you not sign the Contract,

and meet your ghostly colleague,

and dip your biscuit in a materialist

Inferno,

To Burn, and Hiss in Serpent’s

Cunning?

 

They, did not.

 

And so they hated life.

 

And they wanted to see

The End

of it.

 

They wanted that, every day,

And it never came.

And it never comes.

 

Now, the Ghost knows all of us well,

He stalks in our dreams

And curses, alike, our waking eyes.

 

They wanted it every day,

And it never came,

And it never comes.

 

Only the Ghost comes,

And only that perilous

Horror:

 

“Off with the bloviating

tears, of those with tragic

Hearts!

 

My appetite remains,

and no stomach I have,

so that, infinite, my terror

Imparts!

 

What sympathy, sordid for Men,

perhaps another, not I, may so happen to

Start,

 

To heal the wounds of the lost,

and struggling babes,

I will crush, and maim, and dissolve, and smash,

by a Murdering Dance,

into a

Hundred

Parts!”

 

See,

 

In a Universe of Justice:

the more tragic, the life,

Would be

The most visible.

 

But the universe we know:

The more tragic, the life,

The more

Invisible.

 

This is the Ghost,

and if you’ll meet him,

or not,

Regardless, he will boast,

that your will withers,

and rots,

for it is not a question,

and there is no debate!

He will force a way through,

and define your fate,

 

and ever you may run,

or ever still hide,

nonetheless comes,

that ghastly bodiless fright,

and there is no home,

and nothing is honest;

it’s a bed of silent screams,

for all who would be human,

and modest.

 

Love is sure dead,

and no one looks deep

into the natural, spiritual swells,

that time immemorial

would keep,

 

for this is no time,

and soon no place,

but only a city of drones,

and an inhuman race:

 

to put down and deform

all that from Time’s Poets was born,

and in just a few short years,

everyone embraced the fears

 

that prevent firey souls

from sequestering the Ghost,

for dead, he cannot be,

but only dampered the most,

 

And this would leave a

Hole

Big enough for a War,

that these bright heroic hearts

could wage evermore!

 

They were so close,

Their fears were naught,

but alone they fought,

and so prevailed the Ghost.

 

And they hated life.

 

And they wanted to see

The End

of it.

 

They wanted that every day,

And it never came.

And it never comes,

 

And it ever drains,

And it ever runs,

And the River is mighty,

And its cascades, lightning!

 

Still, an ember remains,

for a New Day

of

Brightening.

 

 

_________________

 

R.V. Smith: “The Ghost”, 01-20-26

 

© 2026 by Ryan Vincent Smith