(Edited, prose version)
Only trolleys promised the ghouls, at night shut down from human touch, a free ride through the town and unregulated belly fills. They run silent from curtained crypts and sewer lanes, the ghouls, somewhat discombobulated. They discard the wilting peel of twice stretched dust in sunset hues and sift through firefly sieves butter-melting soft into the gibbous waning murk. They sweep at last against the lacquered frame of the trolley car, small eager bumps up the patterned steps into the air-fresh and cushioned cab.
With garbled growling, the engine spits on, coaxed by papers weighing coin. Inside the box, light flicks on, fluorescent sunlight without scorn. Disjointed clapping off and on. The ghouls unwind cheerfully as the trolley cab lurches forward on long-forgotten sidewinding tracks through backwoods streets and depot lanes. They jostle on, the trolley and the ghouls, who stretch and stretch resplendently under the fluorescent flecks. From gangling gnarls of fading whine--vague as April morning mist--they bloom to lucid joyous shifts of wail, no longer mist but structured bits of startling brawn, with face and fist and hair like twine.
Now through winding coffin lanes, they rove, where their cousin air weavers rush to and fro, and perchance too late to slow, making circus eyes and circus mouth to see the ghouls alive, up close. They gather ash and scatter dust, from moon's first yawn to moon's last gust. The trolley putters on till night concedes to dawn, when ghouls scatter back to curtained crypts and sewer lanes and trolley yields back to human will. For moon makes more soup than sun, and wails more kin than whine. So trolleys promise ghouls the night, to come to life, to wail in coffin lanes, to harvest the ghosts of the circus-brained, who pass from ash to ash again under the trolley wheels and return to form at night again, as ghouls to join the reaper's throng.
With garbled growling, the engine spits on, coaxed by papers weighing coin. Inside the box, light flicks on, fluorescent sunlight without scorn. Disjointed clapping off and on. The ghouls unwind cheerfully as the trolley cab lurches forward on long-forgotten sidewinding tracks through backwoods streets and depot lanes. They jostle on, the trolley and the ghouls, who stretch and stretch resplendently under the fluorescent flecks. From gangling gnarls of fading whine--vague as April morning mist--they bloom to lucid joyous shifts of wail, no longer mist but structured bits of startling brawn, with face and fist and hair like twine.
Now through winding coffin lanes, they rove, where their cousin air weavers rush to and fro, and perchance too late to slow, making circus eyes and circus mouth to see the ghouls alive, up close. They gather ash and scatter dust, from moon's first yawn to moon's last gust. The trolley putters on till night concedes to dawn, when ghouls scatter back to curtained crypts and sewer lanes and trolley yields back to human will. For moon makes more soup than sun, and wails more kin than whine. So trolleys promise ghouls the night, to come to life, to wail in coffin lanes, to harvest the ghosts of the circus-brained, who pass from ash to ash again under the trolley wheels and return to form at night again, as ghouls to join the reaper's throng.
(This still needs a lot of work, clearly. I think it would be better as a short story than a poem or brief prose piece.)
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