Revisionist Poetry – “The Dead Still Sing in Granite” – Ghostly Stones, v.4 (Revised while listening to The Doors)

The stones rise up like tired gods,
marble jaws, granite spines,
standing crooked in the fever-light
of afternoon and ash.
Names are carved like spells
into their pale and dying skin,
names the rain has worried loose,
names the sun has kissed to ruin.

They keep their vigil over the buried ones,
the sleepers under six feet of silence,
the vanished kings, the broken girls,
the dreamers with dirt on their hands.
Time moves through here barefoot,
a blind drummer in the heat,
and every stone remembers
what the living refuse to hold.

Once they shone like polished moons.
Once they were touched with flowers,
with tears, with nervous fingers
from those who came to kneel.
Now they lean into the wind
like old prophets drunk on distance,
their edges cracked,
their faces scarred by rain and rusted air.

But listen —
beneath the weeds and weather,
beneath the pigeons and the traffic hum,
there is still a pulse in the stone.
A low cold music.
A voice trapped in the mineral dark.
It says: I was here.
I burned.
I loved.
I vanished.
Do not call me gone.

The crowd walks past.
The world keeps spinning its bright machine.
Still the stones stand guard
at the mouth of the deep night,
holding the names like flames
that never quite went out.