Ghosts

[good4somethingbum]

Ghosts ©2017 Robert George BMI

I’ve got gypsy rover in my roots and I was raised to travel
There are certain places I can feel the spool of time unravel
Some say history is sand but I say history is fluid
Dripping from the breasts of Nefertiti on the tongues of Druids
From the phantom engineers of ghost trains in the foggy Balkans
To the skulls of modern buccaneers in sunken Pirate Falcons
From the weeping wives who oiled and wrapped the corpse of Tutankhamen
To the dancing shadow of an undead Maricopa shaman

Though it’s an unsolved mystery
It matters the most
If the scroll of world history
Was written by ghosts

When I’m standing at an Arizona crossroads in a cool rain
I can see a blurry caravan of wagons and a mule train
Peaceful spirits in the ruins of a Spanish monastery
Spectral paladins that guard an old Apache cemetery
Ghostly Sopwith Camels over Europe with eternal pilots
Bullet-ridden paratroopers dying on a bed of violets
Pipers play Amazing Grace among the heather of the Highlands
And it soothes the bones of lost Marines in south Pacific islands

Though it’s an unsolved mystery
It matters the most
If American history
Was written by ghosts

Destiny is one more cardboard castle
One more king and one more queen
One more fortune teller
Whose demise was unforeseen

Death is like the smoke arising from a fallen dueling pistol
Or the grey reflection in an old Romani woman’s crystal
It rides double with a skeleton upon a midnight Harley
And it mounts the wind that swims through moonlit North Dakota barley
So I tread my boots across the earth and track its spells and curses
And I sleep with doubt and wake with faith in other universes
Dreamy worlds of apparitions that my spirit might inherit
But I’ll only walk a cosmos that my present dreams will merit

Though it’s an unsolved mystery
It matters the most
If my family history
Was written by ghosts