Haunting The Ghost Poem by David Welch

I've been haunting this old gothic
since nineteen eighty,
when I died from a brain tumor
at the age of sixty-three.

I cannot leave this antique home,
I am well-bound within,
must haunt it for one hundred years,
punishment for my sins.

See this is true purgatory,
how souls suffer for crimes,
not able to ascend upwards,
'till we've served out our time.

It is quite a strange sensation
to both be here and not,
in this world but not of it,
plays hell with the thoughts.

But it would be manageable,
'cause Heaven does await,
except that when I first got here
I made a dumb mistake.

Often when we first coalesce
we feel sorrow and pain,
death and intangibility
run havoc in our brain.

And in that supreme confusion
we can lash out in fear,
this is just what I did to all
people who came here.

Most of them ran off screaming,
what else can you expect?
But soon the word was spreading wide,
setting up what came next.

Tourists started to arrive here
to seek a glimpse of me,
and they always seem to get one
because, good folks, you see

that when a ghost touches the flesh
it gives us a hit of life,
drags us out of silent watching
into visible light.

That's when the people can see us,
wispy shapes and glowing orbs,
the problem for us ghosties is
we're always wanting more.

Like an addict or lifelong drunk,
the urge burns out-of-control,
a moment of what we have lost,
of what cold death has stole,

feels better than the greatest high,
it beats out even sex,
instead of waiting here in peace,
we're just left a jonsing wreck.

Maybe that's part of our penance,
or maybe Satan's sway,
all I know is I truly wish
I did not feel this way.

I wish people did not come here,
their presence tormenting,
we were once told death brought rest,
but I've felt no such thing.

Worse yet are the ghost-hunters
trying to record it,
a man's afterlife should be more
than a way to turn profit.

If never did people come here
I would not have this strife,
I'd be at peace to think about
my family and wife.

I could focus on forever,
when I'd see them again,
not always be pulled back into
the lives of living men.

I've sixty-two more years of this
and it may cost me my mind,
I wish the living wouldn't haunt me,
just let me do my time…