World Of Faceless Ghosts
© Surazeus
2026 09 13

Stuck too long in her world of faceless ghosts,
Sylvia lingers outside the new bookstore
in crowded downtown of the thriving city
where she was born and lived for sixty years,
to watch real human beings pursue their dreams
with faces made from masks of long-dead gods.

Staring at brass statue of her ancestor,
that gleams tall on high marble pedestal
on the wide median strip between busy streets,
where faceless ghosts drive cars with bold intent,
Sylvia wonders what drove him to go west
from Massachusetts to wild Illinois.

Who were you, Captain James Sylvester Dudley,
my grandfather five generations back,
who migrated in wagon train of hope
to found this town on the river shore
where Cahokia had lived ten thousand years,
Sylvia asks the lonely evening breeze.

When I was young and full of lust to live
as popular cheerleader in high school,
I saw our great land of America
as brave leader of world democracy,
so I worked thirty years in real estate,
helping families buy homes to live well.

Now grand illusion of our noble state
has crumbled into heaps of stinking lies,
exposing world empire of national pride,
like all other empires through history,
that has grown from farm of Ragnar Lothbrok
to vast Viking State of America.

I see in faces of Americans,
who swirl around me on their private quests,
spirits of Vikings with sharp eyes of hope
who sailed to plunder treasures of the world,
expanding from Britain to colonize
fertile lands with fierce passion to live free.

Since fall of Troy we sailed to Skandia
where we preserved our ancient warrior creed,
then built America with wheel and ax
to form military industrial complex
with computers linked by world wide web
through which we rule empire of factories.

How can we escape world of faceless ghosts
whose spirits drive our conquest of the world
through agenda of the Christian program
to crown our founder Jesus King of Earth,
Sylvia laughs at absurdity of life,
since we build illusions on ancient myths.

surazeus.blogspot.com/2026/09/…

Orpheus interviews and photographs old gray-eyed woman named Sylvia sitting by the bookstore for his popular social media site Real People of Earth.

#Poetry #Poem #Pastoral #Necropastoral #MetaModernism #Transrealism #NewSublimity #NewRomanticism #AmericanDream #Cinemism #Existentialism #Surrealism #NegativeCapability #NewGnosticism #MetaRealism #NewTranscendentalism #Astarism