Ghost Town

Ghost Town

This town, this town

Like a carousel turns around

Faces in the circus

Each a kind of clown

Painted skin and staircases

Draped in Adam’s Ale

All will turn to Ice Castles

Come the Wind and Hail

Fortress, stronghold, bearer of the monk

Shed loads of lotteries

Every Murder investigation sunk

All because you don’t belong

They say under hushed tones

Concealing garments of Arab beans

Around necklaces of crushed bones

All escalators jar on the snow peppered Mountain tops

They heave their sighs

In heave hoes

Between the goes

And stops

Even the Avalanche will eventually lose control

And then all the helpless victims

Will be released from frozen snow

Here is where the clock ticks

But nobody counts the days

Each are blended today in tomorrow

As billiards knock, kick and part in sorrow

This Haunted place of Ghosts

No wonder Clansmen die

From the painted Motherwell

To the long lost spear of Mackie

Shaken are the frigid hands

That turn to write the page

All are white who can call fright

Back to the Scottish Stage

Macbeth is in is Torpor

The Lady runs blood down the drain

The Wind windmills the wheelie Bins

And it never ceases to rain

The figures in this Chrysalis

The Winter Queen has stilled

Are as the knaves whom at Fairies hands

Will find their life bloods chilled

Some say ghosts are breeding

Some say darkness walks

Hand in hand with feeding

As the Stag’s Head talks

Too many deaths have bleached the ground

Too much blood has soaked its moss

And in these Clan destined days

The wedding sounds drowned out

By the voices of loss

Who here was a Cameron?

Who there a Jacobite who rose?

Who Frames the accursed James

Now lays himself where the thistle grows

Fort William, this town, Onich and Corpach

Bring out your dead

Lay out their bodies

But their souls to here come back

Give them six feet to lay in

Give them a horse’s span

Leave them hands to hold them

They will hold them if they can

Each a living member

Each a tie to Earth

The Mountain Glen

Does remember what its men

In death are truly worth

Living life must cling here

Enter and hang in the air

Each torpid wind-blown vapour

Remembers each wisp of hair

Heavy is the fog now

Heavy on the Pine

Heavy the heave ho, the tug-o-war

And heavy on the Mountain line

Train tracks through the hollow

Deer tracks on the snow

Under the earthen grave so shallow

In the rivers wake they tow

Remember this Fort’s fighting

Remember Romans, English, Danes and Picts

Celts fought in the Mountain Belts

All fought over land

With hands or sticks

Remember said the Winter King

To the Summer Wren

The Season’s change,

But, I remain

Ruler over Men

The Robin flies off from the Holly

The boys beat the bounds sounding jolly

And Winter skins the leafless trees

As the lone figure stands in the folly

Remember when,

The voices ken,

Resound, resound

Within the Glen

Remember me when the Ghosts are Gone

From this Ghost Town

Fort William