In Troubled Dreams--By Tim Ryerson--United States

In Troubled Dreams

Abandoned in the fifties after the war
A freight elevator stuck between floors
Obsolete machinery, splintered old chairs
In a warehouse in Newark, New Jersey somewhere

Dead air presses down, stifling and thick
Something still dwells behind one of those bricks
Curled up in a ball, it waits for me there
In a warehouse in Newark, New Jersey somewhere

A musty gray vapor that whispers my name
It seeps through the wall and creeps to my brain
It sighs and it groans as my soul is laid bare
In a warehouse in Newark, New Jersey somewhere

It mumbles and moans and drones of ancient tombs
Of claustrophobic closets and dim, hollow rooms
I cry out for help, echoes answer my prayer
In a warehouse in Newark, New Jersey somewhere

The ghost of my lonely, my lost and alone
My hopeless and helpless, my can't go back home
It's looking at me now with a dull, vacant stare
In a warehouse in Newark, New Jersey somewhere

Tim Ryerson is a published poet from Ponchatoula, Louisiana who retired from the printing business in 2011. He began writing in the 80’s but did not take it seriously until 2001 after the untimely death of his then 21 year old son. He does not have a ‘signature style’ but prefers writing different forms of poetry. Many of his poems use southern slang and Cajun dialect. He also enjoys writing humorous poems, especially limericks and senryu and was among the winners in the latest Humor Press writing contest with his entry “Emergency Rooms Just KILL me.”