Solitary Confinement

Word Pictures Contest

Submit a Free Verse Poem (no rhyme or pattern)

Optional Style:

Elegy


MONTHLY PROMPT:


There is something about abandoned places that give us a sense of unease. Remnants of countless lives lay scattered and forgotten, leaving silent objects with secret memories. We can almost see them drifting among the ruins - the ghosts. Phantoms of those who haunted these sacred places, souls possessing unknown hopes and dreams. Who are those faceless specters? Where did they go? What happened here, what drove everyone away? I give you three different places to ponder over: a mental asylum, a city, and an amusement park. What stories do they whisper to you, dear poet?


I chose “free verse” instead of the “elegy” option, and prompt 1, a mental asylum.

I walk these narrow haunted halls
Left here to deteriorate
Into nothingness.
History repeating itself.
I was once left here, as well.
The premise, or so it was noted,
Was to help my deep depression.
In the fartherest reaches
Of my imagination
I could not believe
What was happening to me - to us!
I shall never forget his deception.
Treacherous. Calculating.
I loved and thought I was loved -
My first fatal mistake.
His profession made it easy.
He scorned Hippocrates,
Locking me away to be rid of
What I had unknowingly become.
His burden, His rich psychotic burden.
Tragic tale, the stuff movies are made of.
Nonetheless, true.
Locked away to rust and rot, eft under
Medical supervision
Day in and day out.
Given whatever drug
Of his choice to gain reactions,
And glean the justification
He needed to carry out
His perfidious plan.
It worked. I died.
Now, even the mouldering facility
That was my home in Hell,
Has failed.
I am yet again left behind,
Though not solitary.
Others walk with me.
Tortuous souls like me,
Eternal festering aliens in a
Decaying concrete tomb.

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