These places are always scary at night. <br />Dark and demonic, <br />Grey and grimey, <br />Forlorn and lonesome. <br />So cold and empty. <br /> <br />Are there ghosts? <br />Of men who paid rent, fed babies <br />Drove autos, loved women? <br />I've been told they haunt places <br />Where they are owed something, <br />Where they suffered and strived, <br />Laboured and laughed, <br />Working elbow to elbow, day in and out, <br />With men in the same $2 shoes. <br /> <br />You can hear them wail on the wind. <br />The ghost whistle screams, <br />Warning them to keep working or return to their graves. <br />Stay in your graves! <br /> <br />No, they never stay. <br />They won't be told anymore. <br />They march, one by one, <br />Like miners coming out of the shaft, <br />And go their separate ways <br />Or dash to the nearset pubs in small, chummy groups. <br /> <br />This factory, once so alive, shut down fifty years ago, <br />Leaving these men tired and hungry, <br />At once angry and bored, <br />Completely hopeless. <br />Too old to work, too young to die. <br />Their sacrifices padded a rich man's pockets one more time. <br /> <br />It is just business makes such a lovely good-bye. <br /> <br />These places are always scary at night, <br />But they are more frightening in the daylight.<br /><br />Patrick O'Reilly<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/thoughts-on-an-empty-factory-at-night/
