Part XVIII

(Moving straight on Part 18, we are back through
the eyes of the killer.

XVIII

Herding screams like crocheted baubles

He plucked each target from the rooftops

With the grace of a fishermen

Slicing hairs off heads

And coke cans from hands

With a skill most of his ex army mates

Would have been proud off,

Piercing dreams with hard earned sweat

Flicking art with each bullet

Ripping policemen in half

And people running to his rescue

Into splots of paint,

Slowly drowning in his own happiness

With each kill

Unaware you can’t kill ghosts

With bullets

Until it was too late. 

Part XVII and Guest Poet 12 - Tina Ford - Ghost Poem

(Part 17 is a step forward in time between our two main characters.

Our latest guest poet is Tina Ford who i know from Write Out Loud
and of which i am made up she has got in touch to submit the excellent
enclosed guest poem. More of her work can be read here)

XVII

Streaming with sweat

In encompassed pauses

I couldn’t speak

For several minutes after

‘That it?’

I eventually coughed out

Strung out

Across empty offices

With phones ringing

Off the hook

‘No’ She said

‘This is only the beginning’

Acutely timed

Freelancing in the breeze. 

Tina Ford – Ghost Poem

In this waiting room I wait,

Morning papers read,

Useless conversations had,

Talking with undead,

They treat me as a living soul,

And that I do not mind,

I've lingered here for decades now,

My life was so unkind,

They do not seem to bother,

At my dirty clothes and hair

My blood stains all but disappeared,

Along with locks so fair,

Once a lady asked me,

Do you live round here,

I answered her quite boldly,

Of course I do just there,

I pointed out the waiting room,

Onto the tracks outside,

She looked at me disgusted like,

And laughed, as though I'd lied,

But this is where I wandered,

As I waited for my love,

He couldn't catch me quick enough,

That night I took a shove,

A shove into the coming train,

I would never out race,

My life was gone in an instant,

But I never saw their face,

But all of this i did not mind,

As i waited for my groom,

I knew it wouldn't be long now,

We would be leaving here quite soon,

He went to fetch my bridal bow,

The wind had blew it high,

I saw my friend Elizabeth,

She came to say goodbye,

But Elizabeth looked sorrowful,

Her tears rolled down her face,

Walking quite a march was she,

There was no need to race,

I remember calling Tommy,

Before I hit the track,

And seeing poor Elizabeth,

Pulling and holding him back,

The train had passed so quickly,

And when I looked to see,

There on the bank was my bridal bow,

No sight of Elizabeth or Tommy,

And so i wait and wait some more,

For he's bound to show quite soon,

Then we can take the track together,

On our long awaited honeymoon.

Part XVI and Guest Poet 11 - A CENTENARY WAR POEM by Attila the Stockbroker

(Into the second half we go now, and this next piece tells the story through the eyes of the young shop assistant who we met earlier.

Our 11th Guest Poet needs no introduction from me, the legend that is Attila the Stockbroker who makes his second appearance in two years on my ghost story poems)

XVI

Numbed leaves

Cut across her feet

When she told them

Of how brave he’d been

When the bullets

Knocked her off

The display counter,

Bandaging themselves

Around her

Bridging half truths

Flattened in memory

Of forced levity

Retiringly dry

Stumbling out in sentences

‘I owe him my life

before concluding

she thought she’d heard

another voice

rippling in the background

contracted out

almost of nothing

minutes later.

A CENTENARY WAR POEM

For Bill Baine, 1899-1968

1/15th Battalion, London Regiment , soldier number 535068

‘What passing-bells for those who die as cattle?

Only the monstrous anger of the guns.’

And so some lines to spike centenary prattle:

These words a sole survivor soldier’s son’s. 

My father Bill, born in Victorian England: 

The sixth of January, 1899.

His stock, loyal London. Proletarian doff-cap.

Aged seventeen, he went to join the line.

Not in a war to end all wars forever

Just in a ghastly slaughter at the Somme -

A pointless feud, a royal family squabble

Fought by their proxy poor with gun and bomb.

My father saved. Pyrexia, unknown origin.

Front line battalion: he lay sick in bed.

His comrades formed their line, then came the whistle 

And then the news that every one was dead.

In later life a polished comic poet

No words to us expressed that awful fear

Although we knew such things were not forgotten.

He dreamed Sassoon: he wrote Belloc and Lear. 

When I was ten he died, but I remember,

Although just once, he’d hinted at the truth.

He put down Henry King and Jabberwocky

And read me Owen’s ‘Anthem For Doomed Youth’. 

‘What passing-bells for those who die as cattle?

Only the monstrous anger of the guns.’

And so some lines to spike Gove’s mindless prattle:

These words a sole survivor soldier’s son’s.

Attila the Stockbroker

Part XV and Guest Poet 10 - Chords of Aberration by Gray Nicholls

(At the halfway point, and here is a somewhat more tender poem about the two central characters. Out latest guest poet is my good friend, Gray Nicholls who I have known for a long time now I guess and never ceases to surprise me with his work. To read more of his work including his amazing waiting for Nancy sequence, please go here http://www.writeoutloud.net/blogs/graynicholls)

XV

Standing still in motion

The memories of how

We’d first met

Still sway above the flames

Migrating in the breeze,

Absconding over

Your repeated warnings

Lost over my headphones

Suffused with smoke

Instead of lipstick

And broken bottles

In a bizarre version

Of flirting

Even thou death separated us

Mercilessly entertained

By the carnage around us

Not once but twice

Fast-forwarding

Across bleached roots

From madness

To cold blooded murder

Anchored in love

Without even realising it

At first

Or indeed second.

Chords of Aberration

Playing silently in the wind,

The piano was the only thing

Unaffected by the constant bustle

Inside the station,

Inflicing moments of peoples lives

With invisible chords

As they rushed to and from

Their journeys

A motionless aberration

Rigid in its desires

Moist deep in its wilting beauty

Layered deep in the nothingness

Of grey haired dust

And the only thing not to

Run when the bullets started flying.

Gray Nicholls

Part XIV and Guest Poet 9 - Untitled by Jack Hutchinson

XIV

Drumming across the heavy rain

Divorced from the statement he had just read

The police inspector it was clear

To the more eagle eyed reporter

That besides not wanting to be there

Clearly did not believe a word what he said,

Pausing in-between each sentence

Almost like he was trying to leave

No room for error with each breathe

He was not going to take any questions

Let alone offer much more of an answer

With each word he chose to say,

Stating over and over again

With a barely look away from his words

That there had a gunman on top of

One of the roofs on Platform 12

Who decided to turn the station

Into a shooting range,

And an officer he declined to name

Until his family had been informed

Had given his life protecting the public

In stopping the gunman

Who was a known previous offender

But not a known marksmen,

Feigning his own survival

By saying if what had really happened

He likely would have got sectioned. 



Untitled

I'm still here,

Still above the ground,

I grew tired of waiting

And left where you laid me down

On that winter's day,

When you chose the root

And cut off the excess

Chose to lay down dem bones

I am no longer stuck to them

I flit through the now cold buildings

The once warm party places

Watching the histories play

Life upon life left behind

The secret scars, defacing,

The dead quiet

I watch a family grow

Then leave, then die,

And the living dead that time defies

Replaced, in turn, by the young,

Strolling and driving and loving

All the same things that I did

My touch is forgotten,

Somewhere, someone relearns to smile

Without me

Still waiting for you

To forgive my desire to love

Raise dem bones

I have seen ten thousand years

Ten million fears

Ten billion tears

Now I stand at the edge

The end of the loop

A great choice

Beyond which, your home

My bones

I cannot get them back

Cannot return

The thought of reliving resickens

Even in this notion form

So I pass beyond

Onward, to haunt

Your tomorrows.

Part XIII and Guest Poet 8 - Natfastic Submarine Dream

(Speeding towards the halfway point, here is Part 13 telling the story from a none human pair of eyes - a little dog.

Guest Poet 8 is my friend Natfastic again who offers a second poem called Submarine. Natalie's link again to read more is http://writeoutloud.net/profiles/natfastic)

XIII

Gleaming like flowstone

Stumped almost ankle height

He was the only one

Who saw the final confrontation,

Turning leaves like footsteps

Pinned to each punch

Glinting with violence

Increasingly linked together

Twisting each movement

In an isolated dance

With a salt rain

Blistering his ears

Crocheted with heavy sleet

Decorated over his paws

And soaked tail

Translating the madness

Into flowering corpses

Flickering off empty shells

Gouging in the moonlight. 

Submarine Dream

In the deep

blue-black

of a submarine

I made my bed the floor;

spread rough blankets

whilst shoals of fish

flashed past portals

in tinsel flickers

of inky light and

nightmares haunted

dreams of intangible reefs

I couldn’t reach.

I lay down hardened

grappling blankets;

caressing roughness

until the fleeting broke

and opaque waves

of galaxies gazed

and hinted freedom.

Part XII and Guest Poet 7 - Siofra Martin - Memories

(Not getting as much time as I would at the moment to write little
notes before all of these pieces but hope you are still enjoying them.
Todays is from the point of view of a cleaner who saw everything)

Next guest poet is a young lady from near Bantry, Southern Ireland
who wrote a wonderful poem last year for Ghost Story I, Siofra Martin
who has again wrote another lovely poem. Her poem for those interested
from last year can be seen again here - http://napowrimo2014.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/guest-poet-7-siofra-martin-ghost.html)

XII

Percussive his words

Barely left his lips

Describing what happened

Cartwheeling with stumbles

And his mop bucket

Started biting at his ankles

Sheared  in emotion

Cast not out by sunset

But by frozen breath

Failing in his own grief

He didn’t have the courage

To do what he saw others do. 

Memories

i can see it, there on the side

a forgotten memento of times gone by

showing a holiday, hardly remembered

golden sunlight, around mid-September

colourful costumes and skin of soft peach

faded smiles on an indistinct beach

a moment of summer time happiness that's been

captured just so- for eternity

a picturesque scene, recognized by most,

a moon faced family, depicted by a ghost

Siofra Martin