Tainted (Free Verse)

Photograph taken at Andersonville National Historic Site in central Georgia.
A gorgeous day:
the sky is blue;
the air is crisp,
and a bird swoops in low
over the field to land
in search of insects.

The sign is kind of a bummer:

It tells me that 13,000
people died here --
most by shitting themselves
into unconsciousness.
(it doesn't use those exact words.)

This is Andersonville --
site of a Civil War prison camp.

Here, I believe in ghosts.
I don't believe in ghosts
when drinking my morning coffee
at my dining room table.
I don't believe in them when I
turn off my bedside lamp.
I don't believe in them anywhere --
anywhere else -- really.

But here they vibrate up
through my boot heals,
and I fear I may
shit myself.

Shit Creek [Limerick]

Photograph taken in Budapest, Hungary at the City Park.
The sign said that one cannot swim,
But the chances of that were quite slim.
It looked like pea soup,
But the color of poop,
To swim up Shit Creek you'd have to be dim.