this is an older poem of mine that i wrote a few years back
about how it was like living in pine ridge at my grandpa's old house
and it is a place where i still go to in dreams--but they are never pleasant ones.
I believe that there are certain places that can truly haunt even though it's been
years or even decades.

JW.


Pine Ridge Wonderland


in a two bedroom boxhouse
colored like an institution
a mile outside of Pine Ridge
my family and i lived
long before it burned down
it was a place nobody wanted to stay at
because it never felt lived in
relatives rotated
-in to drink
-and out the door when the alcohol
was gone
the floor was usually coated
with dried sticky beer
and there were so many holes
in the walls
i always wanted to climb into them
like the rabbit hole in
someone elses wonderland
and sometimes in was out
in that house
i'd end up eating with the roaches
and dreaming of someplace better
the laughing howling fools
would always return with their beer
and play their suicide sing-alongs
of old country songs
and i wanted to get out
of their wonderland
before i got trapped there
and become like them
but so many years
of crawling in and out of
those holes
i couldn't help but fall back in
and their whole world
was my looking glass
and I could no longer cast
my own reflection