This poem is inspired by this song, and kind of revolves around the feeling of damaging youself by staying with someone who is causing you pain. It's meant to be an extended metaphor that the city of ghosts is actually the person's mind housing all of this hurt. I didn't want to directly copy the song, just incorporate a little hint of it (hence the last line of the poem) and use it as a basis for the lyrics/idea.
Credit: Fox, Jetra, Havingfun_ISKEY

The streets were paved with rotting heads,
and lined with mindless skulls.
A screaming wind formed with their spirits,
flowing in sporadic lulls.

Large buildings lay across the rubble;
hanging desolate like your mind.
When you step into the city of ghosts
who knows what you will find.

Mournful cracks in the pavement,
cause fractures of their own.
They hide a multitude of heinous sins;
provide the spirits with a home.

A gloaming, iridescent blanket
spreads thinly across the town.
A fragile veil suffocates the mystery,
a veneer and broken crown.

Whilst here, your bones will turn to dust
and your skin will melt away.
The city will wrench your heart out,
and force your mind astray.

A figment of your imagination,
formulated from eternal pain.
These rotten heads should not seem odd,
When your mind is just the same.

For in this town,
full of ghosts,
you are just haunting yourself.

TEAR DROP
The winning acrostic from Chron's writing contest in February to celebrate 210 subscribers. I enjoyed dramatising the singular tear drop, and then rambling on about dark, decrepit and relentless emotions in the latter half of the poem. I'm a happy person - honestly!

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RENDERED DESOLATE
An acrostic written in the finale of "rFPS Season 1" hosted by Chron, against Camarilla. I really wanted to experiment with rhyme scheme, pattern and pauses hence the abundance of punctuation - I aimed this to represent the lengthy thought process behind the desolation to end the poem.

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IMPUNITY. INFECTIVITY. IMPIETY. (S.O.S. WE NEED YOUR HELP. WE ARE STRANDED)
Clearly I have some weird fixation on using acrostics in the finale of blogging competitions as this was for the LOST Finale of Season 2 against Chron. I wasn't too happy with the outcome - I knew what journey I wanted the poem to take, I had the starting sentence and ending paragraph, but I choppily tried to chart the emotion of the stranded group over time in between. But hey, I'll leave it for you to decide:

THE AVIARY
Dark, and twisted - my favourite kind of poetry. I don't really know what inspired this response to the theme of "birds", but here it is.

Glossary:
Sorrel Tree - A North American tree with leaves that have an acid flavour.
"Fruit of the poisonous tree" - A law in the United States that states if the source of the evidence is tainted (illegally obtained - aka the tree) then anything that comes from it (aka the fruit) is tainted as well.

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THE JOYSTICK CIRCLE
Again, this was written for rFPS, under the theme of "Video Games" in one of the latter weeks. The title "Joystick Circle" is meant to represent how even through the twists and turns, you'll always end up right where you started.

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INSTILLING GOOD THOUGHTS; RENOUNCING PAST DEMONS
Written with two excellent bloggers, Camarilla and XiuhcoatlSlayer for FoUND - the theme was motivational poetry, and so we took the route of limericks to instill postive thoughts.

TIMED OUT
I crammed this small poem into my contest entry for the LEGO contest: I knew I wanted to include a short verse or two, but the concise nature is really down to the constrcting word limit.

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6 WORDS
The challenge set was to write a poem consisting of 6 words that contained at least one of these words (ambience, paranoia, limit, detrimental, enveloped, rose): this was based off of a similar brief apparently once set to Ernest Hemingway, who went on to write "For sale: baby shoes, never worn.".

OUTFLAWED
A poem based off of the theme of "Outlaw Western" set in the LOST competition. There was more backstory than this, but here's the poem that rounded off the entry.

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THE JADED DOUBLE-EDGE
References:
"The Ivy Green" by Charles Dickens
"The Echoing Green" by William Blake

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THE UNFULFILLED PROMISELANDS
I like the word harmatia.

Tear Drop - 01/03/15 - Chron's Writing Contest
6 Words - 19/04/15 - 6 Word Challenge
The Unfulfilled Promiselands - 17/07/15 - FoUND W1
Instilling Good Thoughts; Renouncing Past Demons - 07/08/15 - FoUND W2
The Jaded Double-Edge - 02/09/15 - rFPS W1
Eyes Bigger Than Our Stomachs - 03/09/15 - rFPS W2
The Dwindling Cosmos - 04/09/15 - rFPS W3
The Joystick Circle - 05/09/15 - rFPS W4
The Aviary - 06/09/15 - rFPS W5
Rendered Desolate - 09/09 /15- rFPS W6
OutFlawed - 17/09/15 - OutFlawed LoST S2 W3
Timed Out - 30/09/15 - LEGO Contest
Impunity. Infectivity. Impiety - 13/10/15 - LoST S2 W4

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The City of Ghosts - 04/01/16